


The Mistakes We Made

by tastewithouttalent



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blow Jobs, Broken Bones, Canon Disabled Character, Coffee, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Guilt, Hand Jobs, Homecoming, Inline with canon, M/M, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Past Violence, Phone Calls & Telephones, Physical Disability, Physical Therapy, Psychological Trauma, Reunions, Series Spoilers, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2016-09-29
Packaged: 2018-06-08 01:04:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 40
Words: 92,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6832528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Shizuo doesn’t have to think of his past, doesn’t have anyone he would recognize on the unfamiliar streets; he can walk through the crowd without listening for his name, without scanning the faces for a familiar smile or a friendly wave. And it’s then that he thinks of Izaya." It's been years since their last fight when Shizuo sees a familiar face in a foreign city.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Peripheral

Shizuo barely thinks about Izaya at all anymore.

He can remember when this wasn’t the case. For the first few months after their last fight, after Izaya disappeared from the city like he had dissolved into the air, he was on Shizuo’s mind more than he wasn’t, more persistent in his absence than his presence ever was. There’s an irony to that, Shizuo knows, that just when he finally cleared the city of Izaya’s toxic influence it’s his own mind that betrays him, drawing up long-buried memories and unasked-for curiosity that weights the back of his thoughts like lead he can’t shift the way he could shift a physical obstacle. It’s as if Izaya in memory is as slippery as Izaya in reality was, like the recollection of him is as impossible to grasp as he ever was in person, and all Shizuo’s efforts to evict the other from his thoughts are useless as he always thought his threats would be. But maybe it’s just a matter of time, maybe it’s just a matter of patience; because Izaya’s not in the city anymore, is he, and just as Shizuo begins to accustom himself to carrying the other with him in his thoughts those start to fade too, until whole days go by with nothing more than the usual hazy nightmares of dark eyes and darker hair that fade with the rising of the morning sun.

For a long, long time, Shizuo didn’t even know if Izaya was alive or not. At first that was a point of satisfaction, a weight in the center of his chest he mistook for relief for months while his nightmares went darker and more threatening, until one night he woke in the small hours of the morning with his heart racing and his hands fisted on themselves as if enough pressure would shed the memory of Izaya’s bones giving way under his knuckles, as if enough effort would push away the knowledge that he could have done it without Vorona there to stop him, that he could have watched the light fade from Izaya’s eyes and the smile flicker away from his lips and known it was his doing, that it was his fault. Shizuo stumbles into the bathroom to run his hands under water that runs too hot and he doesn’t bother to turn down, as if the liquid will wash his skin clear of the nonexistent blood he imagines he can feel in the creases of his knuckles, and by the time his hands are aching with the heat his heartbeat has eased a little, has slowed enough to grant him back awareness of reality and the knowledge that even if Izaya did die it wasn’t directly at his hand. But the thought lingers, the possibility that Izaya’s absence is indicative of some larger loss, because wouldn’t he have come back, wouldn’t he have at least called Shinra to let him know he survived? Shizuo doesn’t know how badly injured Izaya was -- he can only remember the fight in flashes, in the clear feel of bone crushing under his fist, in the weight of Izaya’s smile like a burden all its own, in the sound of the other’s sharp voice straining on what must have been pain, by then. But he was standing, and he was speaking, and he can’t have _died_ , his death seems like an impossibility to even consider. But the more time passes with no word, with nothing to testify to Izaya’s existence except the spaces he left behind him, the more Shizuo worries, and the worse his nightmares get.

The interview is a relief, when it comes. Shizuo suspects it’s out of courtesy to him that his friends so studiously avoid Izaya’s name; he’s the only one who brings it up, now, and even then he can see the wide-open shock in everyone’s faces at how calm he can stay on the subject. He can hardly explain the guilt that has settled inside his chest like it’s made a home for itself, can hardly explain the hazy nightmares that come with sleep and the vague regrets that come with waking, can’t put voice to the alternate endings he thinks about, sometimes, the turning points where a shift of speech or of reaction could have given him a friend instead of an enemy, could have given the city peace instead of a war. But then the question comes, an inquiry after Izaya that Shizuo has to take a moment to parse, and with it the certainty that Izaya is alive, somewhere, even if his fingerprints are wearing off the city in his absence. Shizuo can feel the edge of the smile that catches at the end of his answer, can feel the old familiar heat of anticipation that speeds his heart as he lets his voice drag long over _Izaya-kun_ , and his dreams that night are warmed with the gold of nostalgia instead burdened with the weight of guilt.

It’s easier after that. Freed of the burden of his own fears Shizuo finds the rest of his life falls into an easy rhythm, the pattern of his day-to-day life finally achieving the calm stability that he always said he wanted when he was younger, when the possibility of peace was so distant as to be pointless to even reach for. He sleeps better, the nightmares fade as fast as his memories do, and by the time two years have passed Shizuo has stopped turning for every catch of wind against a black jacket, has stopped jumping at every knife-edge laugh he hears. Izaya fades to a memory, even the weight of guilt fading into the dull ache of regret until Shizuo has almost forgotten, until he has almost learned how to live in the calm that his life has become.

The vacation is an impulse. He has nowhere to go, no distant relatives to visit; all his family are nearby, within a few hour’s travel at most, and it’s hardly as if his daily job is a source of stress. But Tom’s original off-hand suggestion takes root in Shizuo’s mind, gaining traction off the six-month honeymoon trip Shinra still talks about with enthusiasm Celty can only barely restrain in him, and finally it’s Kasuka who says “You should” with a flat disinterest that proves far more convincing to Shizuo’s wavering thoughts than a more eloquent attempt at persuasion would have been. So he goes, takes a week off work that Tom assures him are no kind of an inconvenience and takes a train ticket to a town he’s barely heard of, chosen more at random from the list of possible destinations than with any true goal in mind. It’s enough to be away from Ikebukuro, to be away from the streets that carry the lingering recollections of long-past fights beaten into their pavement; the absence makes Shizuo feel lighter, detached, like he weighs less than he’s used to, like he might just come free from the ground entirely if he takes a too-hasty step. So he walks slow, and lets his attention wander, and if he gets some sidelong looks for his height or for his hair no one stops him and no one tries to pick a fight with him just to prove their own fighting ability. It’s strange to have glances slide off him, strange to see a complete lack of recognition in the eyes of others; Shizuo didn’t realize how familiar he was in Ikebukuro, didn’t realize how much he had grown accustomed to complete strangers glancing at him with recognition behind their eyes. But here he’s no legend, he’s nobody at all; just a tall man with blond hair and a bartender tender, as easily forgotten as anyone else in the crowd of strangers. It makes Shizuo feel free, untethered from his life and his history and his strength, as if he could be anyone, as if he could be anything he wanted. He doesn’t have to think of his past, doesn’t have anyone he would recognize on the unfamiliar streets; he can walk through the crowd without listening for his name, without scanning the faces for a warm smile or a friendly wave.

And it’s then that he thinks of Izaya.

He can’t figure out why at first. It’s been weeks since the other crossed his mind, except in the lingering remnants of the nightmares that Shizuo can barely remember upon waking. There’s no familiarity to the streets around him, nothing to recognize in the faces he sees; Shizuo can’t explain why his heart suddenly constricts, why his breathing stutters so hard on adrenaline that he trips over his own feet and has to stumble to regain his balance. It’s just there, in his head, as clearly as if Izaya is standing right in front of him: the shine of a blade, the cut of a smile, the dig of a grating laugh. For a moment Shizuo even imagines he can smell him in the air, that weird metallic _wrongness_ clinging to his breath like it’s trying to infiltrate his lungs with poison. It’s the strongest impression he’s had of the other in years, strong enough that it pulls him to do what he hasn’t done in months, to turn and look over his shoulder with the startled response of a peripheral glimpse of a half-seen face. This is familiar, too, this jumpy reaction; Shizuo can feel himself flinching at the action even as he moves through the turn that he thought he had broken himself of, the whip-quick pivot to look for a face he knows he won’t see in the crowd. He’s blinking hard, shaking his head to clear it of the haze of sudden nostalgia as much as of the rush of adrenaline through him; and then he hears the voice, and all thoughts of shaking off his flash of recognition stall to shocked silence as he hears the high skid of a laugh too familiar for even common sense to reject.

It’s Izaya. Shizuo knows it is, knows it so deep in his bones that he can feel his stomach drop like he’s suddenly lost his connection to the earth. He’s scanning the crowd, looking for dark hair or a fur-lined coat, and he doesn’t see him but he _knows_ , he knows, his heart is pounding itself to the edge of panic in his chest and he can still hear him, can pick out the sound of that voice from the murmur of the crowd around him as clearly as if it were shouting his name. Shizuo wants to speak, wants to open his mouth to lilt out the familiar rhythm of the other’s name in his throat, but his chest is too tense to allow him a breath and he can’t find the air he would need for such a call. He’s still scanning the crowd, glancing at faces and rejecting them as fast as he can pick out their features; and then the wind catches a dark sleeve, and Shizuo’s head turns to follow the movement of its own accord, and he sees him.

Shizuo was looking at the wrong level. He had been scanning the faces on height with his own, skipping from one to another across the top of the crowd, even glancing briefly to higher levels, the kind of ledges and railings Izaya always favored in their Ikebukuro fights. But Izaya is lower, below the head height of the crowd and hard to see even when Shizuo realizes where to look, because he’s in a wheelchair, leaning back against the support of it with one hand bracing a phone to his ear and the other handling the controls for the electronics of the chair. His coat is still there -- it was that that Shizuo saw, catching the wind for a moment of familiar motion -- but it’s draped around his shoulders instead of over his arms, making the shape of a cape more than the jacket it really is. Izaya isn’t looking at Shizuo; he’s watching the crowd in front of him, his mouth caught against the edge of some unthinking smile at whatever he’s listening to on the other end of the phone. He speaks again as Shizuo stares at him, his mouth moving on words too soft for Shizuo to make out but for the cutting edge on the other’s voice; and then he laughs, a spill of sound so familiar it shudders down the entire length of Shizuo’s spine as if he’s been electrocuted. Izaya’s eyes are bright, his smile flashing as sharp as the knives he used to carry; but he navigates the crowd without effort, without any stress visible on his face, which speaks to a months-old familiarity with the wheelchair that fits so poorly into Shizuo’s memory of him.

Shizuo doesn’t know what to do. He wants to look away, wants to turn aside and lose himself in the crowd; he wants to call out, to taste Izaya’s name loud on his tongue again and see the other’s head snap up to meet his gaze. But his throat is constricting on itself, the odd combination of nostalgia and novelty too much for his coherency to handle, and Shizuo’s voice has died in his chest, has left him gaping speechless as Izaya moves past without seeing him. All it would take is a glance, Shizuo knows; his hair and his height make him stand out as much as his uniform, and whatever else may have changed he is certain right down in his bones that Izaya would know him at a glance, would know him at a word. But Shizuo can’t speak, and Izaya doesn’t look up, and as the crowd carries him past all Shizuo can do is stare at the unbelievable reality of Orihara Izaya alive, and here, and oblivious to his presence.

It’s long after Izaya has vanished from sight around a distant corner that Shizuo can think to catch his breath, and longer still that he stands unmoving at his position on the sidewalk, ignoring the odd looks his expression gets him as much as he does the more usual glances.

He’s sure anyone would react this way upon seeing a ghost.


	2. Direct

Shizuo isn’t good at subtlety. It’s never been his forte, either through nature or inclination, and his situation in Ikebukuro always made any attempt at such useless before it began. His temper is too quick, his person too well-known, and if he’s interested in getting a particular piece of information it’s always been enough to just ask his friends what they knew. He’s never thought about it before, never put any real effort into the process in the past; but now, with Izaya’s existence haunting his present as well as his past and stranded in an unfamiliar city, he doesn’t even know where to begin to get more information about the other.

He regrets not calling out for him on the street, wishes he had found the voice and the presence of mind to shout for Izaya’s attention right there in the moment while he had the other in sight. But he couldn’t recall how to breathe at the time, couldn’t decide if he wanted Izaya to see him or not, and by the time he had made up his mind the other was so long gone Shizuo couldn’t even make an attempt to follow him. He spends that evening thinking about it, turning the flash of that smile and the grating edge of that laugh over and over in his memory as if he can wear off the sharp edges by repetition, and there’s nothing he can do about it that night but he thinks anyway, unable to lose himself to more comfortable lines of thought when he has Izaya’s present-day features burning hot in his memory. Shizuo can’t even decide what it is he feels, can’t put shape to the pressure weighting against his chest until it’s hard to take a breath: is it relief? Horror? Panic? Excitement? It shifts as fast as he tries to pin a name to it, twisting into unpleasant nausea low in his stomach one moment and swelling to tense the back of his throat with giddy energy the next. Shizuo can’t sleep, can’t calm himself enough to attempt rest even after he takes a bath long enough and hot enough that he feels dizzy from the steam. He retreats to his bed after that, lying awake on his futon and staring at the unfamiliar ceiling while all he hears is the echo of Izaya’s laughter in his ears, and then his phone hums against the floor to startle him away from his hazy thoughts. He reaches for it without thinking, lifting it over his head so he can squint at the text; it’s nothing important, just a message from Celty hoping that he’s having a good time on his vacation and passing on vague well-wishes from Shinra that Shizuo suspects to be more an invention of Celty’s kindness than something Shinra actually thought to offer on his own. It’s nothing critical, doesn’t require a reply until the morning; but it gives Shizuo an idea, and when he types back _thanks_ and leaves the rest of his recent news unstated he does it without noticing the smile dragging at the corner of his mouth.

He goes to the internet the next morning, after he’s woken from the few hours of sleep he was able to find after resolving his internal struggle to his own satisfaction. His stomach is still jittery with adrenaline, his shoulders still tense with anticipation and panic in equal parts, but it’s not difficult to find a forum board for the city he’s in, and a few minutes of browsing let him find what look like more gossip than the pristine front-page reviews that are visible to a more casual observer. He skims through the rumors and teasing replies without any real interest -- even in Ikebukuro, it was always easier to blame any unexplained happenings on Izaya than to look for another cause -- and finally he gets to the bottom of the page, where an empty box suggests his next step to him as if he hadn’t already made up his mind. Shizuo stares at it for a moment, rearranging words in his head into the right framework, and then: _i’m looking for an informant_ , except that’s not right, he doesn’t even know if Izaya’s still doing the same work he did before. Shizuo deletes the last words, rephrases: _for Orihara Izaya_ but he can’t know that’s still the name Izaya’s using, doesn’t know if he’ll be giving himself away by the direct reference. He deletes the entire message, glares down at the blank white of the empty box; and then, fast, before he can think about it:

_saw an old acquaintance today wearing a black jacket in a wheelchair. anyone know him?_

He hits _Post_ right away, before he can change his mind and backspace out of his own commitment. The screen flickers, updating to reload the page, and then his comment is there, listed under a generic username composed more of numbers than letters. Shizuo frowns at the screen, considers reloading to see if he has any responses; then he realizes it’s only been a few seconds, that the adrenaline in him is tensing his expectations unrealistically high, and he locks his screen and pushes the phone aside before getting up to find something to eat.

He thinks about it the whole time he’s out of his hotel room, while he’s navigating the streets to a restaurant a few blocks away and once he’s positioned himself in a seat near but not quite at the window so he can glance at passersby without making himself an object of display next to the glass. He spends the whole meal looking out the window more than at his plate; but there’s no flutter of a dark sleeve in the wind, no sound of laughter or taste of metal in the air, and when Shizuo leaves the restaurant he ducks his head and hunches his shoulders, moving as quickly as if any of these attempts will keep him from being immediately recognizable at a glance. It’s a useless endeavor but one he can’t help but make, and then he makes it into the safety of his hotel hallway and finds himself feeling more disappointed than relieved. It’s infuriating, to have his emotions be so indecisive even in his own head; he’s rougher with the key to his door than he should be, his grip so tight the electronic keycard squeaks and starts to crack before he can persuade himself to loosen his hold. It’s still intact enough to let him in at least, and he tosses it aside as soon as he’s in the door to save it from further damage. It’s then that he glances across the room to see his phone lit up with a notification, and he would swear he can feel his heart stutter on something that feels a lot like panic. He gets his shoes off carefully, taking the time to line them up alongside the door while his pulse races in his throat, while he takes his sunglasses off to set alongside the door as he tries to recall how to breathe normally. He moves across the room to the couch, sits against the cushions while he tugs a cigarette out of his pocket and sets it to his lips with some poorly-defined thought of calming himself before checking his phone. It might not be Izaya, he tells himself, it could be snarky replies from strangers as much as the response he is...hoping for? Dreading? He doesn’t know, can’t define it, but the breath of familiar smoke in his lungs at least steels him to action even if it doesn’t ease off his nerves. He drops his lighter to the table, blows out that first breath of smoke, and then he finally reaches sideways and for the phone blinking like an armed bomb against the table.

There’s a handful of responses, he sees right away, not the single weighty one he was braced for. The first few are useless, mockeries of his phrasing or the futility of his request or insults about the anonymity of his username, _do you think you’re some kind of secret agent?_ followed by a string of emojis and devolving into a back-and-forth between two strangers that has nothing to do with Shizuo or his original question at all. Shizuo scrolls all the way through them, scowling deeper with each message, and then, two comments from the bottom, one that came later than the initial rush of nonsense: _Ikebukuro?_ linked to a username as incoherently anonymous as his own.

Shizuo stares at the message for a moment, at the question so brief as to leave it stripped of any identifying markers at all. Then he hits _reply_ , types in _yeah_ and sends it fast, before he can think the better of it. The response comes as quickly; it’s there as soon as Shizuo has refreshed the screen, _check your PMs_ with no kind of a signature at all. Shizuo frowns at the screen, scrolls back up to the header across the top of the site, and by the time he’s tapped through to the private messaging screen there’s a notification in his inbox, the message linked to the same incoherent username from the forum. He opens it right away, tapping through with hands that feel like they should be shaking and are remarkably steady in practice, as if it’s his whole being that is humming inside the perfectly stable shell formed by his body.

 _Always good to hear from an old friend,_ the message reads, as if the speaker has the least idea who Shizuo is. _I’ve had to change my phone number several times since my departure, my apologies if you’ve been trying to contact me that way. In-person visits are easier, if you don’t mind doing the footwork yourself._

Shizuo’s heart is racing, his mouth is dry. His stomach feels like it’s in free-fall, his breathing is catching on adrenaline completely unaffected by the shiver of nicotine purring into his veins. There’s still nothing definitive, no sure way to identify the sender of the message; it might be someone completely different, could be some kind of trap that Shizuo is walking right into. But the possibility that it is Izaya, that it’s the other’s fingers tapping out whip-quick replies to Shizuo’s messages, is enough to prickle electricity all up Shizuo’s spine, to make his hands slow and clumsy as he composes a reply.

_in person is fine. where do you want to meet?_

_You can come to my hotel room_ comes back the response, followed by a room number and a name Shizuo thinks he may have seen once on one of his rambling walks around the city. _It serves as my base of operations here. Anytime after nine tomorrow morning is fine, I have visitors drop by all day._ That sounds familiar, with the almost-taunt of suggested popularity under the phrase; but then there’s a last line, separated from the rest of the paragraph, that makes Shizuo’s skin prickle with self-consciousness. _It’ll be good to see someone from Ikebukuro again_.

Shizuo stares at that last line for a long time. It’s better proof than anything else that Izaya has absolutely no idea who he is, that the invitation is being made to a generic acquaintance rather than with any suspicion of his actual identity. He thinks about making it clear, about framing his reply into some hint that Izaya could pick apart to discover who he is; but everything feels too obvious, heavy-handed and forced even in his imagination, and finally he just says _i’ll see you tomorrow_ and leaves it at that.

It’s only for a night, anyway. Come the morning they’ll be facing each other for the first time in two years, for the first time since Shizuo left Izaya bleeding onto the Ikebukuro pavement to find his own way to continued survival. Shizuo doesn’t know if he’s looking forward to the meeting or dreading it, but when he chases down sleep from the tangled sheets of his unfamiliar bed, the old nightmares are ready to greet him.

It’s a long wait to the morning.


	3. Obedient

It’s easy to find the hotel. A quick internet search gives Shizuo a better reference within the unfamiliar city than his vague impression of having seen the name sometime before, and then it’s a matter of minutes to walk the intervening distance from his own hotel to the front entrance of Izaya’s. He doesn’t look around at the strangers moving past him; there’s no chance of glimpsing Izaya or of being unexpectedly seen by him, not if he’s in his room as he indicated he would be, and Shizuo has more than enough on his mind to keep him frowning at his feet and lost in his own thoughts for the distance of the walk. He’s not nervous, exactly; it’s not panic dropping his stomach to his feet, or at least not panic as he’s understood it in the past. It’s more dread, anticipation turned over into the shadows of unpleasantness until he would stay in his room, would refuse the meeting entirely if there were any part of him that could allow for that. But he can’t walk down the street without jumping at every head that turns towards him, and he can’t leave the city and leave this opportunity untaken, and if he’s going to do this he’d rather do it fast, rather face down the problem and resolve it right away so he can go home, can go back to Ikebukuro and the comfort of his peaceful life and the rest of his dreamless nights secure in the knowledge that the chapter of his existence with Izaya in it is finally, properly closed. It’s the need for resolution that pushes him through the front door of the hotel, that urges him into the elevator rather than adding on the unnecessary delay of climbing multiple flights of stairs, and then the doors open to deposit him on the highest floor of the hotel and Shizuo is moving forward as if he’s using someone else’s body to do it, as if that desire for conclusion is in control of his limbs and his own consciousness is left free to tremble high-strung adrenaline at the back of his thoughts.

It’s easy to find the room. Half of the topmost floor is given over to what looks like a restaurant, or maybe some kind of meeting space; Shizuo only glances at it before he turns in the other direction to consider the handful of room doors with the numbers printed on neat plaques alongside the handles. The one he wants is at the very end of the hall, pressed up against a corner that suggests a somewhat larger space inside than the others have; Shizuo stares at the number for only a moment before he lifts a hand to knock hard against the door itself.

 _“It’s unlocked,”_ calls a voice from inside, and even through the door Shizuo’s entire body prickles with shivery recognition of that tone. _“You can let yourself in.”_

Shizuo looks down at the handle, feeling his spine shiver into electricity as if he’s been shocked, as if there’s a charge flowing through the air on the sound of Izaya’s voice calling out to him. He wonders if Izaya can feel it too, if now with him so close the other can feel the shuddering premonition of Shizuo’s presence as he reaches out for the handle. Then his fingers are against the metal, and the door is opening to his touch, and Shizuo steps forward and into Izaya’s room.

Shizuo sees Izaya first. The room is bigger than Shizuo’s on the other side of town, with enormous windows spanning the two outside walls to show the street below. Shizuo can see the motion of people along the sidewalk, the distance too great to see their faces but enough to pick out hair color and clothing; for a moment he wonders if Izaya saw him coming, if Izaya recognized his approach and is ready with some kind of preset trap for Shizuo to walk into. But Izaya’s not at the window; he’s in the middle of the room in the same wheelchair from before, his head propped against one hand and his legs crossed while he scrolls through his phone with the other. For a moment Shizuo is just left to stare at him, at the ostentatiously relaxed angle of his wrist bracing at his chin and the forward dip of his head over his phone. He’s smiling, just barely, his mouth catching on amusement as the door swings shut behind Shizuo, and then he clicks something at his phone and lifts his head as his mouth curves wider on a smile.

“What can I do for you?” Izaya says, except that his voice fades out to silence halfway through, the sound of his words dying along with all the control under his expression. Shizuo can see his smile fall slack on shock, can see all the color drain out of his face like it was never there at all; his arm falls over the support of the wheelchair, his grip on his phone gives way to let the device slide into his lap. Izaya makes no move to pick it back up, shows no sign that he’s even noticed it’s fallen; for a moment he’s just staring at Shizuo, his eyes wide on shock and his entire expression knocked loose into disbelief. Shizuo’s never seen him look so undone, never seen his facade so thoroughly destroyed even at the end of their last fight, when pain alone should have been enough to do it; it’s uncanny to see his features blank of any plotting, to see all the calculation behind his eyes knocked loose by surprise.

Shizuo doesn’t know what to say. He didn’t make it past this point in his own head, didn’t consider what he would say or do with Izaya actually in front of him, and even if he had put any thought into it he doesn’t know that he would be able to remember with Izaya staring at him like he’s never seen him before. He can’t find words, can’t even decide what he’d like to say if he could, and so he just stands there instead, meeting Izaya stare-for-stare as the space between them stretches taut with silence. Shizuo can see Izaya’s throat work as he swallows, can see his lashes move as he blinks. Finally he licks his lips, and takes a breath, and says, “Shizu-chan,” in such a shaky imitation of his old sing-songy lilt that Shizuo can barely recognize the attempt for what it is. “Here to finally finish what you started?”

Shizuo doesn’t know how to answer. He doesn’t know why he’s here, doesn’t know what it is that he wants from this interaction; he just knows that his heart is pounding double-time in his chest, that his spine is crackling with adrenaline like he hasn’t felt in years, as if the mere fact of Izaya’s presence is enough to revive energy so long-buried Shizuo thought it had vanished forever. He doesn’t have a reply, and he doesn’t know how to handle this moment; so he falls back to his initial question, opens his mouth around the weight of the words he wanted to offer that first time, when he saw Izaya through the barrier of the crowd shifting between them. “What are you _doing_ here?”

Izaya’s laugh is more of a cough than it is amusement, bright on shock as if it’s been punched out of him. His eyes are still fixed on Shizuo’s face, his shoulders are tensing; he hasn’t shifted his legs, but Shizuo can see the strain all through his body, as if he’s going to bolt to his feet and dart away as fast as he used to in Ikebukuro. “I _live_ here,” he says, his voice almost familiar even stripped of the biting amusement Shizuo has come to expect from it. “What are _you_ doing here?”

“I came on vacation,” Shizuo says. “I’ve been here for days.” He pauses, his thoughts whirling too fast to parse. “I saw you in the street.” Izaya’s still staring at him, his mouth wholly absent the smirk that Shizuo had thought as much a part of him as the color of his eyes or the shine of his knife. “I thought you were dead.”

Izaya’s mouth twists up, curling around a smile that doesn’t touch his eyes, the cut of his lips as sharp as ever but turned in on itself like Shizuo’s never seen, like Izaya’s carrying the joke in his own chest and is aiming the knife of his laughter against his skin. “My existence does indeed continue, Shizu-chan, in spite of your attempts to the contrary.”

“What are you _doing_?” Shizuo asks again, because he can’t shake the question from his mind and he can’t gain traction on the form of this conversation, can’t find handholds on their familiar dynamic over the gap of the years that have worn Izaya into something different, some _one_ different, but Shizuo hasn’t changed that much, it doesn’t make sense that Izaya could be so altered by time. Izaya shifts in his chair, recrossing his legs in the other direction, and Shizuo’s attention flickers down to that, finally finding something to latch onto, some evidence of the old Izaya under the familiar features in an unrecognizable expression. “Why are you in a wheelchair? You can move your legs, can’t you?” There’s anger rising in his chest, familiar heat warming his veins like sunlight after a years-long winter, and Shizuo can feel his heart racing with adrenaline, can feel his hands curling to fists at his side. “Are you trying to play some kind of game here too?” He takes a step forward, the movement coming without thinking, without hesitation, his whole body moving on impulse to propel him forward and over the distance between them, like he can pick out the bits of Izaya he recognizes if he can just get close enough. He’s almost smiling, there’s tension nearly like excitement at the corner of his mouth; and Izaya recoils, his phone falling to clatter unnoticed to the floor, and Shizuo’s entire action is stopped dead where he stands.

Izaya’s pushed hard back against his chair, his shoulders pinned tight against the support behind him like he’s trying to push himself straight through the barrier keeping him where he sits. His eyes have gone wide and blank, his mouth is open on his breathing; Shizuo can see the movement of his inhales coming too-fast in his chest, can hear the hiss of sudden panic in the breaths Izaya is taking. His grip on the arm of the wheelchair is white-knuckled, both hands bracing with desperate strength against the chair under him; Shizuo thinks he would be pushing himself backwards in instinctive flight if he could remember how to loosen his fingers from their grip. As it is he’s locked in place, his entire body tense with fear like Shizuo’s never seen it, like all his muscles have seized up at once to freeze him where he is, and his face is utterly bloodless, so pale his hair looks like ink in comparison.

“ _Don’t_ ,” he gasps, and Shizuo’s never heard him sound like that either, like he can’t breathe, like he’s drowning with all the air of an empty room around him. Izaya’s not blinking, not moving; he’s staring at Shizuo like the other is death itself, his entire expression knocked wide-open into horror so all-encompassing it twists Shizuo’s stomach into nausea.

Shizuo can feel his skin prickling cold, his anger draining away to leave his whole body lead-heavy on sudden uncertainty. “Izaya-kun?” Izaya flinches back as if Shizuo’s slapped him, his whole body twisting away from Shizuo standing across the room; his shoulders collapse in on themselves, his spine curving to hunch him forward over his lap, and he still has that awful desperate grip on the arms of his chair, is still digging his fingers so hard into the support that Shizuo can almost imagine the metal twisting under the force.

“Leave,” Izaya says, still with his head turned away, with the weight of his hair falling forward to cover his features. He looks like he’s folding in on himself, like it’s only the support of the chair behind him holding him upright at all. Shizuo’s never seen him look so small before.

“Izaya--”

“ _Please_ ,” Izaya grates, his voice trembling so badly Shizuo can hear the threat of tears on his tongue, can hear the edge of raw panic under the sound. “ _Leave_.”

Shizuo closes his mouth. His skin is cold as if with sudden winter, all the warmth of that first moment wholly evaporated to chill horror. He can hear Izaya’s breathing coming faster with every inhale, can hear it catching into a desperate range of sheer, unmitigated panic that flickers sympathetic terror into his own veins. He doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know how to help; so he does the only thing he can do, and takes a step backwards towards the door again. He doesn’t look away as he pulls the door open, and Izaya doesn’t look back at him; there’s no sign of the tension in his body easing, no sign that he’s noticed any of the signs of Shizuo leaving as he requested. Shizuo backs out of the room, and out into the hallway, and even when he lets the door fall shut with enough noise to make his departure clear there’s no sound from the other side, no indication that Izaya is at all aware of his action. Shizuo stands in front of Izaya’s closed door for a moment, staring unseeing at the barrier as his mind reels over the last few minutes; and then he turns, and moves back down the hallway slowly, without even thinking to reach for a cigarette.

It’s the first time he’s ever done what Izaya told him to.


	4. Sincerity

The phone call comes later that day.

It feels like a long time. Shizuo spends the morning pacing all over the city, frowning at the sidewalk in front of him so hard even the strangers around him move to clear his path so he doesn’t need to bother looking up to acknowledge them. His thoughts are reeling, his heart pounding with a frantic speed that the cigarette he lights as soon as he’s outside does nothing to ease; there’s too much to take in, too much that is so far from what he expected that he can’t even create a structure for it. That looked like Izaya, sounded like Izaya, almost _was_ Izaya; but Shizuo’s never seen Izaya collapse like that, has never seen Izaya’s smirk more than flicker for a moment, and even then it’s barely a breath before the other composes himself. Shizuo has had long years of experience to build up his impression of who Izaya is, sharp edges and rough mockery all the way down without so much as a shred of a human conscience underneath the brittle exterior, and all their interactions up till now have been based on that assumption. Even their last fight was predicated on that, he realizes as his feet move him past unseen miles of city streets and storefronts he doesn’t so much as glance at before they are past; even in his worst nightmares Izaya never lost that smirk, even in the darkest of his memories he can’t call up anything but mockery under Izaya’s voice even when the other was bleeding and broken in front of him. Everything was a dare, everything was a game right up until the end; but this was no kind of a game, there was no structure and no familiarity at all to the sound of Izaya’s voice cracking on raw emotion. Shizuo feels more like he was facing a complete stranger with Izaya’s face and Izaya’s voice than the man himself.

He can’t make sense of it. The city street slides away under the pace of his feet, his cigarette burns down to ash under his smoke-laden inhales, and still he can’t find an explanation, can find no way to turn this experience into something that makes any sense at all in the structure of the life he has always lived. He considers the possibility of some kind of emotional manipulation more than once: maybe Izaya is trying to unsettle him for a particular purpose, maybe he’s trying to persuade Shizuo to let his guard down for use in some kind of a plot. It would be an easy explanation, would be far more reasonable than any alternative; but even when Shizuo starts to get traction on the idea he remembers that first blank shock on Izaya’s face, that first moment of horrified recognition dark in his eyes, and he can’t attribute that to acting no matter how he tries. It was too fast, too reflexive, too utterly convincing; but if that wasn’t an act then that means Izaya really _was_ struggling for composure, really was trying to regain his bearings, and really did lose them completely at the end. And that leaves Shizuo right back where he started, reeling in confusion as one of the few things he took for granted in the world is pulled out from under him, and hours of walking do nothing to steady his thoughts.

He returns to his hotel room eventually. He’s achieved nothing all day except to waste his time and smoke through a whole handful of cigarettes, and he can do both of those just as well in the privacy of his own room as he can pacing out public streets. He takes out his phone, starts to compose a text to Celty; but he can’t make it past the first few lines, doesn’t know how to continue from the sudden beginning of _I met with Izaya today_ to anything at all reasonable. In the end he leaves the message unsent, lets his phone fall beside him on the couch, and gives himself over to smoking and gazing at the wall while he tries to think about nothing at all. He’s in the midst of this pursuit when there’s a buzz from alongside him, the hum of his phone vibrating against the sofa, and when he looks over the screen is bright with the notification of an incoming call.

Shizuo doesn’t recognize the number. He’s not expecting a call from anyone in Ikebukuro, and only the front desk of the hotel here would have his number. But he reaches for the phone anyway, drags his thumb across the screen to pick up, and when he says “Hello?” it’s without any of the tension he would normally have for a stranger calling and interrupting his evening.

There’s a breath on the other end of the line, the sound of an inhale from the caller, and it shouldn’t be enough for identification but it is, or maybe Shizuo just knew who was calling all along, maybe he’s been waiting for this call all day, because he knows who it is, is breathing out a breath of acknowledgment even before Izaya says, “I believe I owe you an apology, Shizu-chan.”

“Izaya-kun,” Shizuo says. It feels strange to frame those syllables so calmly, strange to hear his own voice around the sounds without the familiar surge of anger under his skin that usually comes with them; he feels like he’s waiting for something, like he’s sitting still and expectant for some response, from himself or Izaya he doesn’t know which. He doesn’t know what to say now any more than he knew what to do earlier in Izaya’s hotel room; so he falls silent instead, leaving the empty space of the phone line for Izaya to make the first move.

“I didn’t expect to see you here.” Izaya sounds calmer than he did earlier, very nearly the way Shizuo remembers him from before, from the early days in Ikebukuro, when they fought with smiles on their faces and Izaya was always too light on his feet for Shizuo to catch. But there’s a weird note underneath the other’s voice, a resonance that sounds a little like panic that Shizuo has never heard before; or maybe it was always there, maybe he just never noticed it as anything but Izaya’s usual blind-bright mania. “I did stay out of Ikebukuro, I promise. I haven’t been back in years.”

Shizuo frowns. “I know.” There’s a strain on Izaya’s voice, a rush of haste over the words like he’s trying to defend himself, like he’s trying to derail Shizuo’s ire before it forms. “I didn’t come here looking for you or anything. It was an accident.”

“Ah,” Izaya says. “As long as we’re on the same page. I’d hate to get myself killed for something I didn’t even do.”

“I’m not--” Shizuo starts, and then stops, because he’s not sure how to finish that sentence, isn’t sure what he doesn’t want any more than what he does.

Izaya’s laugh is brittle over the phone. “You’re not here for me?”

“No.” Shizuo is frowning at the wall of his hotel room, fixing the wallpaper with a glare that doesn’t let him see anything in front of him any more clearly than he can imagine the expression on Izaya’s face right now. “I told you. I recognized you in the street.”

“And asked about me online,” Izaya points out. “I didn’t know you were here. You could have left me to my life and gone back to yours. Did you want to deliver another warning about not coming back to Ikebukuro? I heard about your last one, too, you didn’t need to make it in-person.”

“My last one?” Shizuo asks before he remembers, before he tastes the recollection of _I~za~ya~kun_ drawled long and warm on his tongue to the interviewer months ago. “Oh. That.”

“I’m not planning to come back to your city,” Izaya tells him, and Shizuo is used to doubting everything the other says but his voice is still oddly flat, still stripped so bare of any emotion that Shizuo can’t interpret the words as anything but sincere. “Why did you come to see me?”

Shizuo can feel his expression go slack, can feel the creases of frustration across his face ease into the weight of confusion familiar from his earlier pacing through the city. He doesn’t have an answer for Izaya, doesn’t have words for the anxious tension in his chest that hasn’t let him take a full breath since he met the other’s gaze across the distance of a hotel room or the weird guilt that has settled like poison in his veins from the memory of Izaya’s cringing panic away from him. It would be easier with a reason, he thinks, would be easier if he knew what he wanted; but he doesn’t, he doesn’t know what he wants from Izaya or himself or this conversation, even, can’t pick out any specific goal from the tangle of emotion in his chest.

“I don’t know,” he finally says, when the silence has gone so heavy that he can hear the pace of Izaya’s breathing on the other end of the line, his inhales coming a little faster and a little more strained than Shizuo’s own. Shizuo thinks of Izaya earlier, thinks of the slump of narrow shoulders and the white-knuckled grip of desperate hands, and he offers the only comfort he has, tasting sincerity strange on his tongue. “I don’t want to kill you.”

There’s a crackle of sound from the phone, a burst of an exhale so damp and strained it takes Shizuo a moment to parse the noise as a laugh, if a laugh so brittle and aching it sounds closer to a sob against his ear.

“Thanks,” Izaya says, his voice flattened to deadpan that at least has some of the familiar tells for sarcasm, at least gives Shizuo a hint of Izaya’s old tone to latch onto. “That’s really reassuring.” Shizuo can hear the breath Izaya takes, can almost see the toss of his head as he pulls his voice into steadiness. “Let me know if you figure out what it is you _do_ want, Shizu-chan.” The teasing sounds thin, sounds like a facade, but Shizuo lets Izaya keep it, doesn’t try to crack past the surface layer to the unrecognizable humanity underneath. “Otherwise I’m going to get back to my life.”

“Okay,” Shizuo says without any heat on his voice or in his veins at all.

“Enjoy the rest of your vacation.” There’s a pause, a moment of hesitation that goes heavy with possibility; then “See you, Shizu-chan,” softer than what went before, the words oddly resonant even over the static of the phone line.

Shizuo can feel his skin prickle, can feel electricity thrum down his spine and tense in the fingers of his free hand alongside him on the couch. “Yeah,” he says, slow and careful on the word. “See you.”

Izaya hangs up first. Shizuo is left with the weight of the phone pressed to his ear and the shiver of memory running along his spine to keep him company in his hotel room as the sun starts to sink towards the horizon outside his window. He sets his phone down on the table and turns to lie across the couch instead of to turn on the light or move to the bed; his head is too full of realization, his thoughts too busy with sudden epiphany carried on the familiarity of that farewell. There _is_ one other time he’s heard Izaya sound sincere, one other point when the purr of the other’s casual mockery gave way to the flatline blankness of unveiled emotion. Shizuo can remember it, now, the sound of the other’s voice heavy on the phone call that Shizuo had all but forgotten in the adrenaline of the fight that followed.

He wonders, now, if Izaya had meant that _goodbye_ as sincerely as he did this one.


	5. Decision

Shizuo doesn’t figure out what he wants.

He thinks about it. He thinks about it that whole night, with his phone still and silent beside him and his hotel room clouding with cigarette smoke as he lies awake on the couch instead of moving to sleep in the bed as he originally intended. He thinks about calling Izaya, thinks about texting Celty, thinks about forming words to frame the mess of conflicting reactions in his own head; but thinking doesn’t form to action, and in the end all he succeeds in doing is smoking through all that remains of his pack of cigarettes while he gazes unseeing at the hotel ceiling overhead.

He can’t decide what he wants from Izaya, can’t even decide what he wants from this trip in the first place. It was intended as a vacation, as a way to take some time on his own to unwind from his usual routine and exist on his own for a period; but that goal is entirely lost, ruined by the accidental glimpse of a dark coat on a busy street, and now the only question left for Shizuo to answer is whether he should stay longer or return home to Ikebukuro at the end of his planned stay. He’s been here for almost a week, now, which is as long as he had originally intended to linger; staying longer won’t let him find the calm he hoped to achieve originally, at least not so long as he stays in this city. He could go somewhere else -- there’s nothing tying him to this particular hotel or this particular location, it would be easy to take an extra week off and move to a destination free of unexpected nostalgia -- but he hesitates at that idea as much as he hesitates over the idea of going back to Ikebukuro directly. If he leaves the city he feels certain Izaya will disappear, will fade out like smoke to leave nothing but the remnants of plots like fingerprints to say where he’s been without indication of his future destination. The phone number he called from yesterday was unfamiliar; for all Shizuo knows he could have changed phones already, could be out of reach even if Shizuo knew he wanted the contact. But Shizuo can’t stop thinking about that brief conversation in Izaya’s hotel room, can’t stop thinking about the blank shock all across Izaya’s face, the way it made him look human and fragile even before his cowering panic set in to chill Shizuo down to the core of his being. There’s an unpleasantness in the thought of leaving, an itch at the back of Shizuo’s thoughts at the idea of turning his back on this unexpected chance, and he never would have thought this was a meeting he _wanted_ but now that the opportunity lies waiting he can’t be sure he _doesn’t_ want it either. It’s an unsettling thought even in hypotheticals, the concept of speaking to Izaya instead of fighting with him; but then they’ve done that already, in Izaya’s room before his unexpected reaction and over the phone yesterday, and Shizuo’s worldview has already been so overturned he can’t make a whole shape out of the pieces remaining in his grasp.

It would be good to have someone to talk to. Shinra would offer easy conversation but Shizuo knows without thinking about it that his advice is unlikely to carry any kind of real help for Shizuo’s current situation. Tom might be useful, Celty definitely would be, but Shizuo can’t figure out how to begin the conversation with either of them: _I ran into Orihara Izaya on my vacation and I’m not sure I want to kill him anymore_ seems like a rather abrupt way to drop into a discussion he’s not sure either of them want. Shizuo’s seen the way both Celty and Tom dodge the subject even when he brings it up, has seen their gazes flicker sideways and away whenever they are sidestepping the weight of Izaya’s name, and he hasn’t thought it worthwhile to explain that the rage that once surged through him at the very thought of the other has long since cooled and faded into the shadows of regret, if half-formed and undefined. He thought it was fine, didn’t see any issue with letting assumptions stand; but then he never really expected to see Izaya again, and certainly not outside the borders of the city that granted them both so much structure for their relationship. He’s the intruder here, he knows, he has stumbled into Izaya’s life and Izaya’s home instead of the other way around, and he finds the guilt of that creeping under his skin like an unfamiliar itch.

It takes him longer than it should to think of Kadota. Shizuo rarely confides in the other man even when he has issues on his mind; it’s far more likely to be Tom for reasons of convenience, or Celty if the subject is weightier than what he wants to trouble Tom with. But the list of people somewhat friendly with both he and Izaya is short, and sometime in the early hours of the next morning Shizuo startles awake from the doze he slipped into on the couch with the thought of Kadota bright in his head. He pushes himself to upright and reaches for his phone without thinking, and he should text in consideration of the hour but he hits _Call_ instead and is halfway through the pattern of ringing before he realizes his error. Shizuo frowns into the pre-dawn grey past his open windows, considers hanging up and composing a text after all; but then the line clicks into activity, and Kadota’s voice says “Hello?” with no more than the usual weight of his tone on the other side.

“Kadota,” Shizuo says, his greeting simple and unthinking. “I think I need some advice.”

“Oh?” There’s the sound of movement on the other side of the line, voices almost near enough for Shizuo to identify. “Okay. Sure.”

“You know that I’m on vacation,” Shizuo says, and Kadota makes a wordless sound of accord. “I saw Orihara Izaya here two days ago.”

There’s a pause, a moment of complete silence on the other end of the line. Then: “Hang on,” and Kadota turning away from the phone to say something too faint for Shizuo to make out clearly. There’s the mumble of conversation, a brief span of dialogue between Kadota and whoever he’s with; and then “Okay,” against the phone again as the background noise abruptly cuts off. “I’m listening.”

“I saw Izaya,” Shizuo repeats, as much to ground himself into reality as to restart the order of whatever story he is about to tell. “In the street. He didn’t see me but I saw him; he was still wearing that jacket, that’s how I recognized him. When I got back to my hotel room I got in touch with him online and he gave me his hotel address.”

“Woah,” Kadota says. “He just gave it to you?”

“Yeah,” Shizuo says. “I don’t think he knew it was me, though. He just thought I was someone from Ikebukuro until I went to see him.” Kadota takes a breath, shock audible in the catch of his voice, but he doesn’t say anything, and after a moment Shizuo continues. “It was weird.” That’s an understatement, it does nothing to encompass the crisis happening inside the space of Shizuo’s head, but it’s a start, at least, it gives him something to work from. “He’s in a wheelchair. He was _afraid_ of me.”

Kadota lets his inhale go, dragging the weight of the air into a sigh. “Wow.”

“Yeah.” Shizuo tips forward over his knees and lifts his free hand to shove through his hair. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Hm.” Kadota sounds thoughtful, like he’s turning the problem over in his head; Shizuo lets the quiet stretch long between them, lets Kadota process the sheer weight of the brief story he’s told. “Do you want to come back to Ikebukuro?”

“No,” Shizuo admits, glad at least for the immediate answer he has for this question. “Not without doing...something.” He shuts his eyes, grimacing unseen into the dim lit grey of his room. “He freaked out when I moved towards him. Like he thought I was going to hit him or something.”

“Makes sense,” Kadota reminds him. “That’s how you always were with each other.”

“That was different,” Shizuo growls. “That was _before_. I’m not going to just punch him now for no reason.”

“I don’t know if he knows that,” Kadota points out. “You almost killed him last time, didn’t you?”

Shizuo’s skin prickles into cold, a chill running through him at the too-vivid memory: Izaya’s bones giving way to his knuckles, Izaya’s mouth red with blood and still vicious on a smile, Izaya’s voice telling him _do it, monster_ like it was some kind of a dare, like his death was just the last act of some grand tragedy. He can’t answer but Kadota doesn’t wait for a reply; his pause is just a thoughtful one, like he’s working out the details of his speech as he continues. “Do you think he wants to see you again?”

“I don’t know,” Shizuo admits. “He told me to leave yesterday but then called in the evening to ask what I wanted.”

“Ah,” Kadota says. “What do you want?”

“I don’t know,” Shizuo says again, feeling the words drag in his throat and tense the beginnings of a headache against his temples. “I want…” _Things to have been different_. _Him to be like he was. To not feel like a monster._ “I don’t know.”

“Yeah,” Kadota says, as calmly as if Shizuo has said anything of any real substance. “I get it.”

“Yeah.” Shizuo sighs, letting the sound drag heavy in his throat; by the time his lungs are empty some of the strain at his temples has eased, some of the pressure against the inside of his chest has lessened. “Thanks, Kadota,” he says, and means it. “It’s good to have someone to talk to.”

“Sure,” Kadota says. “Good luck. Hope it turns out okay.”

“Me too,” Shizuo says, and lets that stand as farewell as he hangs up the call. His hotel room is a little brighter, the sky outside is glowing with the precursor to dawn; if he looks he can see the beginning of pink at the horizon, can make out the first threads of color working their way up in anticipation of the sunrise. He gets to his feet, feeling every joint in his body aching with movement on too-little sleep as he moves to stand at the window and watch the light spread across the sky; it’s pretty to see and pleasant to watch, like all his personal concerns are faint and distant and unimportant held against the simple beauty of the sun coming up after the dark of the night. Shizuo stands at the window for minutes, watching the light glow brighter as the sun comes closer to the horizon, and it’s just as the dawn breaks into blinding daylight that his phone hums itself into audibility against the couch where he left it. Shizuo turns away from the window, blinking sunshine from his eyes as he moves across the bright-lit room to pick up his phone. There’s no name for the number on the display, no indication that it’s from one of his handful of contacts; but he almost recognizes the number from yesterday, or maybe it’s just another one of those inexplicable hunches that pushes him to tap through acceptance of the call, that shivers electricity down his spine even before he’s raised the speaker to his ear.

“Shizu-chan.” Izaya sounds exhausted, his voice grating over the syllables of Shizuo’s nickname like they’re broken glass tearing his throat bloody on the sounds, but there’s no quaver under his tone; he sounds certain, steady, more sure of himself than Shizuo’s heard him sound in years except in fragmented memory. “We should meet.”

Shizuo doesn’t know what he wants. A full night of contemplation didn’t help him at all, and his conversation with Kadota eased his mind but did nothing to clarify his thoughts. He has no basis for his own actions, no decision in his own mind on which to center himself; but there was a time not a week past when he would have done the opposite of what Izaya suggested just for the sake of contrariness.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Okay.”


	6. Tells

Izaya is waiting at the coffee shop when Shizuo arrives.

It’s not that Shizuo is late. He left his hotel in plenty of time, even arrived early enough to loop around the block in a futile effort to walk off the worst of the nerves prickling uncomfortable tension up the whole length of his spine. But by the time he gets inside Izaya is there already, sitting at the table farthest from the door and closest to the window and gazing out the glass at the street below instead of at Shizuo. He’s in his wheelchair still, with his legs crossed in that way that makes the chair look like an affectation, but the familiar edge of his smile is absent even as he looks down at the movement in the street. His whole expression is more relaxed than Shizuo has ever seen it, between the smirking taunts in Ikebukuro and crippling panic he’s seen here; Izaya looks pensive, like he’s turning over thoughts in his own head and for once doesn’t completely like what he sees.

Shizuo just stares at him for a moment. He doesn’t mean to; it’s not a conscious decision he makes. It’s just that he comes in the door of the coffee shop, and sees Izaya looking so oddly relaxed by the window, and his feet stop him where he stands, several feet shy of the front counter and barely inside the door and as still as if he’s some new addition to the decor instead of an actual person. The nervousness along his spine crackles into active electricity, sparking across his skin in jittery, uncontrolled waves of heat and cold alternately, and Shizuo can’t tell if it’s excitement or dread that is so dropping his gravity from under him. He doesn’t respond to the question from the front counter, barely hears the repeated inquiry even as it goes louder with rising concern, but the sound is drawing stares, catching the attention of unimportant bystanders, and then Izaya turns his head to look to the front and sees Shizuo staring at him.

He doesn’t look as shocked as he did in his hotel room. That’s the good news, that there’s barely a flicker of surprise that washes across his features before his expression falls into calm composure that is at least easy to look at even if Shizuo knows it to be a facade. But his shoulders tense, his hand comes out to the arm of his chair, and even from across the room Shizuo can see the way Izaya’s fingers tighten against the support, can see the way his throat works on a swallow like he’s bracing himself for some unseen attack. Shizuo’s seen people look at him like that before -- it’s the way strangers in Ikebukuro sometimes flinch back from him, the way high school classmates used to recoil when he came around the corner of a hallway -- but he never saw it from Izaya, even when he was purring the other’s name over his tongue like a promise of violence to come, like a warning for the damage to be inflicted.

It hurts more than he expects. He doesn’t realize he’s scowling, doesn’t realize he’s decided to move until he’s halfway across the distance to Izaya’s table. Izaya doesn’t keep watching him; he turns away as Shizuo approaches, tipping his head as if to look out the window even though the strain along his shoulders and humming in his fingers isn’t easing. Shizuo is sure without seeing his face that Izaya’s not seeing anything in front of him, that the entirety of the other’s attention is centered on the scuff of Shizuo’s shoes against the floor as he approaches. Shizuo can see Izaya’s shoulders hunch under the weight of his jacket, can watch the angle of his wrist tense into rising panic as the other draws closer, and he’s just opening his mouth to say something -- a shout or a greeting or something completely different, Shizuo has no idea what’s going to spill from his mouth -- when Izaya speaks instead, loud and clearly enough to be heard even without turning his head to face Shizuo.

“Aren’t you going to get something to drink?” His head tips, angling halfway towards Shizuo, but Izaya doesn’t look up; he’s reaching for the cup in front of him instead, stretching towards the smooth white of the ceramic that Shizuo didn’t even see until Izaya’s fingers touched it. It’s still hot enough that Shizuo can see the steam rising from the surface of what looks like coffee; his attention is caught by the ripples across the dark surface for a moment, by the wave Izaya’s motion makes against the edge of the cup, and by the time he looks back to the other’s face Izaya is watching him, his mouth flatline intent and his eyes dark under the fall of his hair over his face.

“Oh,” Shizuo says. “I guess.” He looks away from Izaya’s stare, feeling his skin prickle with the beginnings of adrenaline at turning his back to the other; but there’s no attack forthcoming, physical or verbal either one, and when Shizuo glances back as he approaches the front counter Izaya has turned to his cup again and is staring into the liquid instead of watching Shizuo move away.

Shizuo waits for his drink rather than going back to the table. It’s a good excuse to keep his distance, and it gives him a few minutes to stare unseeing at the wall and try to bring the adrenaline rush in his veins under control. He’s sure he can feel Izaya’s gaze lingering against his shoulders and trailing over the back of his neck like a touch; but when he glances back the other is looking out the window still, the only shift in his position that his grip on the arm of his wheelchair has relaxed. Shizuo looks back to the counter as his hot chocolate is finished, offers a polite “Thank you” as he accepts the paper cup, and then he’s turning to make his way back through the coffee shop to Izaya’s table. Izaya doesn’t turn around as he approaches, doesn’t look away from the window until Shizuo pulls out the chair on the other side of the table to sit down, and even then it’s only to glance at the cup in Shizuo’s hands before he looks back down into his own.

There’s silence for a moment. Shizuo stares at Izaya, and Izaya stares into his drink, and he might not have that white-knuckled grip on the arm of his wheelchair anymore but his shoulders are barely more relaxed than they were; Shizuo can see the hunch of them rocking him forward, can see the faint tremor against Izaya’s wrists belying the attempt at casual calm he’s making. Shizuo’s shoulders are going tense, discomfort with the situation is converting itself to stress along his spine, and in the end he barely makes it through a minute of quiet before he says “What do you want, Izaya-kun?” with more roughness on the words than he intended.

He feels bad right away. Izaya’s jaw tenses at the sound, his fingers tighten against his cup in a tiny tell of stress at the noise; but _sorry_ doesn’t come easy with Izaya in front of him, and Shizuo can’t decide if guilt is winning out over the familiar lines of irritation, and while he’s still stalled on indecision Izaya starts to speak.

“I owe you an apology,” he says, still aiming the words at his coffee; and then he grimaces, and shifts his legs, and lifts his chin enough that he can raise his eyes to meet Shizuo’s gaze. He looks pained, agonized, like all the strain in his shoulders is tying his too-quick tongue to silence for the first time Shizuo’s ever seen; his mouth is twisting on a frown instead of clinging to the smirk that Shizuo is so much more familiar with.

Shizuo frowns right back. “You said that already. On the phone.”

Izaya’s mouth twists. “Yes,” he says, with something of his old mockery layered under his voice. “Your memory is as superior as ever, Shizu-chan.” His gaze slides away again, landing against Shizuo’s hold on his cup instead; Shizuo can see him swallow visibly, can see the distaste in Izaya’s expression flicker into something else, something that creases his forehead and knocks his breathing to a strain in his chest. “I still haven’t, though.”

“Oh.” Shizuo considers for a moment. “Okay.” His mind jumps to that cringing fear in Izaya’s shoulders at their first meeting, skids over the desperate edge of _please leave_ in a voice knocked straight back to childhood by raw terror. The memory makes him grimace and prickles another wave of uncanny guilt down his spine as he clears his throat. “In your hotel room, I--”

“Not that,” Izaya says, sharp and so fast that Shizuo’s words are startled to silence like they’ve been cut off. Izaya is clinging to his cup, now, his fingers tensing so hard against the sides Shizuo can see the surface of the liquid trembling under his hold, and he’s staring at the coffee instead of at Shizuo; his jaw is set, his face pale. He looks like he’s shaking, like he’s having trouble breathing; for a moment he shuts his eyes and ducks his head closer to his chest so Shizuo can’t even see the dark of his lashes.

Shizuo doesn’t move. He feels completely adrift, lost in this interaction with this person who looks so like his archnemesis but acts so different; part of him wants to leave, part of him wants to stay, part of him wants to shout frustration at the complete confusion Izaya is causing in his head. There’s even a part -- a tiny part, barely a flicker against the rest of it -- that wants to offer some kind of comfort, that wants to reach out over the distance of the table and ghost gentle contact against the strain in Izaya’s wrist. But Izaya looks like a tight-wound coil, and Shizuo doesn’t know if his touch would ease the tension or push it past the breaking point, so he doesn’t move, and he doesn’t speak; he just sits perfectly still on the other side of the table and watches Izaya grimace his way through a handful of strained inhales over his untouched coffee cup.

Shizuo doesn’t know how long it takes for Izaya to relax. It feels like an hour; in actual fact it’s probably a few minutes, if minutes drawn long and tense by uncertainty and discomfort. But finally Izaya shudders through an exhale, and eases his hold against the cup between his palms, and opens his eyes. For a moment he’s staring down at the table, watching his fingers shift against his cup; then he straightens his shoulders and leans back in his chair all at once, letting his hands drop against the arms in what would be a decent approximation of casual unconcern if Shizuo hadn’t been watching him for the past ten minutes.

“I made a mistake,” he says, almost lightly, almost calmly. His mouth is a little more relaxed, is almost curving into a smile, but his eyes are still dark. With the light from the window on his face Shizuo can see the weight of sleeplessness printed under his lashes, can see the dark shadows that explain Izaya’s early-morning phone call better than words would do. “In Ikebukuro.” He shifts his legs, uncrossing and recrossing them in the opposite direction; the motion makes him look casual, like the wheelchair is more a throne than a necessity. “I always called you a monster.”

Shizuo’s eyes narrow on uncertainty, confusion printing itself into a frown at his lips. “Yeah.”

“You’re not.” Izaya says it simply, directly, his gaze still fixed full on Shizuo’s face. He _is_ smiling, now, his lips curving up in an expression that only trembles a very little bit. “You’re as human as anyone, Shizu-chan. I should have recognized that from the start.”

Shizuo stares across the table. The cup against his palm is going warmer with the liquid inside; it’s too hot for comfort, coming up on the edge of burning, but he doesn’t pull away. Izaya is still smiling. “What?”

“You’re human too.” Izaya leans closer to the table and reaches out to catch his cup between his hands so he can bring it to his lips and swallow a mouthful. “That’s why I lost our last fight. I was treating you like a monster.” Another mouthful of coffee; Shizuo can see Izaya’s throat work on the swallow before he reaches out to set the cup carefully back against its saucer. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here but I’m glad you are. It’s an opportunity for me to recognize the errors I made in the past and to apologize for them.”

Shizuo feels like he’s lost the ability to comprehend spoken language. He can see Izaya sitting in front of him, can hear and even pull some kind of meaning out of the words; but they don’t make any sense, don’t offer any more logic than Shizuo has been able to make of this new, different Izaya sitting in front of him as if they’ve ever in all the years they’ve known each other had casual conversation over coffee.

“What,” he says finally, trying to find some kind of structure for his speech as he speaks. The word echoes oddly in his ears, comes out strange and distorted until he doesn’t recognize his own voice on the sound. “You’re just going to say you’re _sorry_?” He huffs a laugh, feels his mouth twisting on an incredulous smile. “And I’m supposed to _believe_ you?”

“It doesn’t matter whether you believe me or not,” Izaya says, and this time when he lifts his gaze from his cup his stare is level, his mouth flat on determination. “I’ll accept whatever you choose to do.” His mouth twists again, flickering into a smirk bright enough that for the briefest of moments Shizuo can recognize Izaya-as-he-was underneath the strange shadows of Izaya-as-he-is. He shifts in his chair again, angling one leg up to cross over the other in the opposite direction. “You _are_ human, after all.”

Shizuo frowns. His skin is prickling with uncanny stress, his fingers tensing and releasing against the side of his cup. The shape of the paper is giving way to his hold, the liquid inside teetering dangerously close to the lip of the container, but he doesn’t look at it; he looks down instead, to the casual angle of Izaya’s legs instead, to the elegant line they’re making against the structure of the unfamiliar wheelchair.

“Why are you using a wheelchair?” he blurts without thinking, without even making an attempt to modulate his voice into politeness. “You can move your legs, can’t you?”

“Ah,” Izaya says, and Shizuo looks back up in time to see the other’s smile flickering, to see the edge of amusement at his voice twist into something sharp and brittle for just a moment. “That’s a longer story.” He leans in farther over the table and lifts his cup to his mouth again. “I’m afraid if you want more details of my personal life we’ll need to schedule another meeting. I have another appointment waiting on me.”

It’s intended as a rejection. Shizuo doesn’t need to think through the edge on Izaya’s voice to parse the implication of the words any more than he has to think before he opens his mouth on his response. “Fine.”

Izaya’s gaze jumps up, his smile vanishing to shock as he looks at Shizuo from across the table. “What?”

“Fine.” Shizuo leans back in his chair and fixes his gaze on Izaya without looking away. “Let’s meet again.”

Izaya stares at him. “Aren’t you going back to Ikebukuro?”

Shizuo shrugs. “I can extend my vacation.” He doesn’t bother asking how Izaya knew he was scheduled to leave tomorrow; some things, at least, he can still take for granted. “Let’s meet again tomorrow.”

“I,” Izaya says. Then he closes his mouth, frowns for a moment, looks down to set his cup down. Shizuo can see his mouth tighten, can see his forehead crease; but then: “Fine,” like it’s an admission, as Izaya leans back in his chair and uncrosses his legs as he reaches for the controls with one hand. “Same time, same place.”

“Alright,” Shizuo says. “I’ll be here.”

Izaya’s mouth quirks on a smile. “Enjoy your vacation,” he offers, and then he looks away, steering the width of the chair towards the door with that same off-hand ease Shizuo saw from him in the crowd that first day. Shizuo doesn’t get up to follow him; he stays where he is and watches Izaya maneuver around the other occupants of the coffee shop and out the door until he’s out of sight. Izaya doesn’t look back, and Shizuo doesn’t call after him; he just watches until he can’t watch anymore, and then for a few minutes after, so by the time he looks out the window and down to the street below there’s no chance at all of seeing a familiar jacket around the shoulders of one of the passers-by on the sidewalk. It’s only then that he tries the hot chocolate, the liquid finally cooled enough that he avoids a burn with the first sip.

Even with the cup half-crumpled under his fingers, it still tastes good.


	7. Adrenaline

Shizuo’s first to the coffee shop the next day. He doesn’t show up any earlier than he did the day before, but this time Izaya runs late, after Shizuo has received and started drinking a cup of hot chocolate to match the one from the day before. Izaya doesn’t come over to meet him first; he nods from across the room instead, his mouth curving on a smirk that doesn’t have time to settle in his eyes, and then he moves to the counter to place his order. He doesn’t wait for his drink to come out either; as soon as he’s paid he’s turning to navigate the room to the table Shizuo is sitting at, the same one that Izaya chose the day before.

“You could have picked something closer to the door,” Izaya comments as he comes within earshot. He’s leaning against the arm of his chair as he moves himself forward, adopting an elegant slouch against the support; he looks calmer than he did the day before, a little better rested. Some of the lines of exhaustion have eased from his face, the strain of sleeplessness is far less noticeable, and even when he brings himself up to the edge of the table and lifts his chin to meet Shizuo’s gaze there’s no indication of the strange adrenaline Shizuo could see humming through him during the entirety of their conversation yesterday. He looks calm, composed, faintly amused by Shizuo’s presence in a way that is intensely, startlingly reminiscent of Ikebukuro, and Shizuo can feel a scowl forming across his lips to match, can feel the familiar grate of irritation in his veins as if the two years of time are melting away under the weight of Izaya’s smirk.

“This is where you picked yesterday,” he says, hearing his voice drop into the beginnings of a growl in the back of his throat. “If you have a problem with it--”

“No,” Izaya says, cutting off Shizuo’s words before he’s had a chance to finish forming them. “This is fine.” He looks away, turning his head to look back to the front counter so all Shizuo can see of his face is in profile, the dark smudge of lashes as he blinks and the tension in his neck against the low dip of his shirt collar. The strain of the angle draws Shizuo’s focus to Izaya’s throat, pulls his attention to the rhythm of Izaya’s pulse under his skin, and he stalls out against the rapidfire flutter of movement, the pattern far faster than it should be from just the minimal exertion of making it to the coffeeshop. Shizuo glances back to Izaya’s expression, down to the casual angle of his wrists, but there’s no indication of strain in his face or his hands, just that absolute composure as polished as a performance on a stage.

“There they come,” Izaya says, the words clearly intended for himself more than for Shizuo. Shizuo glances up again, dropping the scrutiny he’s giving to the deliberate, slack calm of Izaya’s fingers over his lap, to see one of the employees emerging from behind the counter with a cup and saucer balanced between his hands. He navigates the space to their table without any hesitation, almost without looking around, before setting the drink against the edge of the table with a bow and a polite “Sir,” directed vaguely towards Izaya.

“Thank you,” Izaya lilts, his voice dipping towards the sugary-sweet range that all but drips insincerity to Shizuo’s ears. He smiles up at the employee as the other straightens and reaches out to rest his fingertips against the very edge of the saucer. “I appreciate it.” The employee smiles back and offers a nod of acknowledgment, and then he’s gone, heading back towards the counter and leaving them to their mismatched drinks.

Shizuo frowns at the cup of coffee. “How did you get them to bring it out to you?”

“I _asked_.” Izaya’s not looking at Shizuo; he’s watching his drink as he pulls it towards him instead, the cut of his smile aimed down at the lip of the cup rather than across the table to the other. “People are very willing to spare me an inconvenience if I let them know how they can help.”

Shizuo’s frown deepens. “Is that all it is then?” Izaya glances up from his cup without lifting his chin, his eyes flickering dark in the shadow of his hair. “The wheelchair. Is it just to make people feel sorry for you?”

Izaya’s expression darkens for a moment, his smirk collapsing into a grimace for the span of a heartbeat. For a breath of time the forward tilt of his shoulders turns into a hunch, the weight of his elbow against the table becomes a brace; it’s as if Shizuo’s words are a burden weighting down his shoulders and sweeping aside the facade of calm he had when he came in. It’s startling to see it crumble so fast, to see the other’s composure give way so immediately when before Shizuo couldn’t crack it no matter how hard he tried, and the surge of guilt that comes with seeing it is as uncomfortable as the sight itself, even if that particular emotion has become unpleasantly familiar over the last few days.

“No,” Izaya says, and looks back down into the coffee in his cup. There’s a spoon alongside the cup within the edge of the saucer; he picks it up and stirs it through the coffee even though he hasn’t added any sugar or cream that Shizuo has seen. “I’m not that desperate for sympathy, Shizu-chan.”

Shizuo frowns at the top of Izaya’s bowed head. “What’s wrong with you, then?” It’s not until Izaya huffs a laugh that Shizuo even considers the extra weight to his words, that he hears the unstated applicability of them to far more than just the other’s physical state; but Izaya’s moving before he can clarify, letting his spoon fall against the edge of his cup as he leans back in his chair and lifts his head to meet Shizuo’s gaze directly again.

“It hurts to walk,” he says, far more simply than Shizuo expected. “I probably could for a little distance if I had to.” His mouth drags at the corner, twisting onto a smirk at something in the space of his own mind. “If my life were in danger, or the like. But it’s...unpleasant.”

There’s a weight on his words, a resonance under them that makes the choice of adjective an obvious understatement. Shizuo doesn’t comment on it; he’s still frowning across the table, still trying to gain enough traction to make sense of the topic.

“How--” he starts, then stops, frowns harder. “What happened?”

Izaya’s eyebrows jump up, his smirk collapsing into a sharp laugh like it’s been startled out of him. “What _happened_?” he repeats, incredulity raw and harsh at the back of his throat. “Don’t you remember, Shizu-chan, it was your doing in the first place.”

Shizuo recoils from the edge of the table. “I didn’t hurt your legs,” he insists. “It was your arms that…” His free hand curls into a fist, his nails digging in hard against his palm at the recollection: the feel of bone shattering like glass under the impact of his knuckles, the _crunch_ of a body not-his caving in to the weight of the blow.

He can hear the breath Izaya takes, can hear the drag of it hard in the back of the other’s throat. “Yes,” he says, sounding so strained Shizuo blinks distraction from his vision to refocus on the other’s face. Izaya is staring at his hand, his jaw set on tension and his shoulders hunching again like he’s bracing for a blow; he looks paler than he did a moment ago, like the blood has drained from his face along with the strength in his voice. Shizuo can see him lick his lips in a bid for more moisture than they presently have. “Yes, you shattered my arms. Don’t worry, I remember _that_ clearly.”

Shizuo looks at Izaya -- at the angle of his shoulders, at the dark of his eyes staring at Shizuo’s fingers, at the tension in his hold bracing at the edge of the table. Then Shizuo eases his fist, uncurling his fingers from the weight of his grip without looking away from the other’s face. He can hear the breath Izaya takes as his hand eases into relaxation, can see the way the tension in the other’s shoulders slumps into relief. His spine prickles with self-consciousness even before Izaya looks up and away from his hand to meet Shizuo’s eyes instead, to fix him with a stare so dark Shizuo can’t get even a trace of a read on the emotion behind his eyes.

“It was before that,” Izaya says, his mouth holding to flatline focus without twisting into distaste or a smirk either one. His eyes look almost black in the shadow of his hair; Shizuo’s not sure Izaya’s seeing him at all in the moment. “When you hit me into the office building.” He blinks, his eyes come into focus on Shizuo for a moment; his mouth is still flat. “You remember _that_ , at least, don’t you?”

Shizuo does. It’s hazy, the details lost to the burn of the adrenaline in him and the intervening years, but he can remember wind in his hair, can remember the sound of glass breaking and the feel of metal creasing under his grip, the impact of the weight in his hand hitting the too-fragile resistance of the other’s body. The memory makes him cringe with a retrospective horror he never felt at the time and Izaya huffs a sound that is not quite a laugh and not quite an exhale.

“Yeah,” he says, for all the world as if Shizuo had spoken aloud to confirm the memory. “That was the worst of it, actually. My arms healed, after all.” He lifts his hands from the table, fluttering his fingers dramatically as if to prove the point before dropping them back to the arms of his chair. “My legs didn’t.”

“But.” Shizuo doesn’t know what he wants to say. He doesn’t have words for the bitter guilt on the back of his tongue, doesn’t know how to frame the words for the apology he’s not even sure he means, yet. He spent months thinking he was a murderer, thinking he had the burden of Izaya’s life on his conscience; this is almost worse, somehow, to see Izaya’s life continuing but altered by Shizuo’s influence, to see every moment of his day touched by the impact of Shizuo’s past actions. His thoughts reel, skidding back from the depth of the responsibility; it’s too much, it’s too weighty, and it’s only the worse when he’s not sure he can find it in him to regret what he did. He can remember Izaya’s arms under his knuckles, can remember the drag of the other’s mouth on an attempt at a smile as he leaned back against the support of a pole, as he opened his mouth to gasp _do it_ \--

“Wait,” Shizuo says, and blinks, and the memory dissolves like it was never there, leaving him with Izaya sitting across the table from him and lifting the weight of a cup of coffee to his lips. Dark eyes meet Shizuo’s across the table but Izaya doesn’t pause his movement; he takes a drink of his coffee instead, careful at first to test the heat and then in a larger mouthful. Shizuo frowns, reaching for the timeline of his too-clear memories, lining them up over and over again until he can be sure of their order. “But you were walking after that. You were _running_ , before…”

“Ah.” Izaya takes a breath and looks down into his coffee cup. When he moves to set it back in the saucer he does so carefully, delicately, like he’s in danger of spilling it. Shizuo can see the faintest tremor in his fingertips as he lets the cup go, before he turns his palms down to press them to steadiness against the table. “Yes.” He clears his throat deliberately; it’s a strange sound, when Shizuo’s never heard him more than hesitate for a breath of time over his speech. “I don’t remember that particularly well myself.” His fingers tighten against the table, his knuckles going white with some unspoken tension, but Shizuo doesn’t interrupt him. “Apparently it was a matter of adrenaline under pressure that kept me moving. I was more concerned about my continued survival than physical pain. I’m told that did more damage than the rest of it.” His eyes come up, his gaze focused behind the weight of his lashes; when he smiles there’s no warmth in it at all, no humor under the expression for Shizuo or himself either one. “You would know all about that kind of thing, wouldn’t you, Shizu-chan?”

Shizuo doesn’t answer out loud. He just stares back into the dark of Izaya’s stare, holding the focus of the other’s gaze until Izaya’s smile drags wider, until he ducks his head to huff a humorless laugh down towards the dark surface of the coffee in his cup.

Shizuo wonders if Izaya’s spine is prickling with as much adrenaline as his own is.


	8. Hesitant

Shizuo’s phone rings as he’s getting out of the shower.

He left it on the table in the middle of his hotel room, where he’ll hear it buzzing even with the ringer itself turned off like he leaves it in the evening. The shower went longer than he expected, the heat of the water enough to unwind tension in his shoulders he didn’t know was there and wipe the tangle of his thoughts blissfully blank for the time he lingers under the spray. He can forget about Izaya, can forget about the weight of the past and the confusion of the present and the uncertainty of the future; if he closes his eyes he can even pretend he’s in his own apartment and that there’s nothing but the comfort of routine waiting for him on the other side of the bathroom doors. It’s an appealing illusion, even if he constructs it knowing full well that’s all it is; by the time he moves himself back to action the bathroom is full of steam, the air heavy and hard to breathe as if it’s formed of smoke or stripped of the oxygen needed to keep Shizuo’s thoughts clear. The idea is an uncomfortable one, too close to the memories that have been looping through Shizuo’s mind on repeat since he caught that glimpse of Izaya in the street three days ago, and he rushes through the last half of his shower, leaving his hair wet over the towel around his shoulders as he opens the door to air out the steam of the bathroom with the air-conditioned cool of the rest of the room.

His phone is buzzing as he opens the door. Shizuo can see it from across the room, can see the flicker of the screen bright against the dim of the falling dusk; he takes a step towards it, thinking of checking to see who’s calling, but even as he moves the phone goes still, the screen shifting into the display of a missed call instead of an incoming one. Shizuo frowns at the lost opportunity, stepping farther forward into the room as he lifts the towel to ruffle the damp out of his hair. There’s no image associated with the number, no familiar name displayed across the screen before it fades to the dark of inaction; but Shizuo has a guess about the identity of the caller as soon as he sees the string of unfamiliar numbers across the screen. He opens up his call history one-handed, scrolls down through the records of previous days; there’s the call yesterday he had with Kasuka, a few minutes enough time to catch them both up on the occurrences of each other’s lives, and a slightly longer discussion attached to _Tom-senpai_ for the conversation Shizuo had asking for another week’s worth of vacation. And before that there’s the call with Kadota, and between Tom and Kadota: a very brief call, not even a minute’s time all told, associated to the same number that just rang through to silence. Shizuo pulls the towel off his hair, crumples the soft of the fabric in his hand; and then he taps the _Call_ button over the unsaved number, and lifts the phone to his ear as it rings through to Izaya.

It rings for a while. Shizuo frowns into the dark of his hotel room as he listens to the electronic hum of sound against his ear; it couldn’t have taken him more than a minute to check his call history and dial back, Izaya can’t possibly have given up on whatever he wanted so quickly. But his phone rings, and rings, and rings, and when there’s a click it comes with a pause so long Shizuo wonders if he hasn’t been sent over to voicemail without any of the electronic notification that usually comes with such.

“Hello?” he asks, or starts to ask, but Izaya talks over him, says, “Shizu-chan,” as lightly as if Shizuo is just picking up his first attempt at a call instead of returning it. “Did I wake you?”

“No,” Shizuo says, glancing sideways at the clock by the bed. “It’s not even eight. I was taking a shower.”

“Ah,” Izaya says, and then falls so silent Shizuo can’t even hear the sound of his breathing. Shizuo waits for a moment, letting the quiet stretch long as his scowl deepens, and finally growls, “What did you want?” against the silence on the other end of the line.

Shizuo can hear Izaya take a breath like he’s collecting himself. “What?”

“You called me,” Shizuo says, frowning as if Izaya can see the expression on his face. “What did you want?”

“Oh.” Izaya pauses again. For a moment Shizuo is afraid he’s going to go completely silent; but it’s only a few seconds, this time, before he speaks again. “How long before you go back to Ikebukuro?”

“Not sure,” Shizuo says with complete honesty. “I have the rest of the week off from work at least.”

“Ah,” Izaya says. “Tom-san is really lenient with you, isn’t he?”

It’s shaped as mockery. Shizuo can hear the sound of his own speech pattern on _Tom-san_ , can hear Izaya’s tone dropping into an odd echo of his own as he says the words, but there’s no real bite to the meaning under them, and the attempted dig doesn’t gain traction on just the sound of Izaya’s voice. “Yeah, he is.”

There’s quiet again, Izaya’s speech dying to silence in the failure of his attempt at teasing. Shizuo lets it linger, uncertain of Izaya’s goal in this call, unsure if he wants to stay on the call himself, unwilling to hang up on the sound of Izaya’s breathing on the other end of the line. So the quiet stretches, as tense as peace between them has ever been, and finally Izaya says, “Are you going to stay here the whole time?” in a voice like Shizuo’s never heard from him before. There’s a strange tremor under the words, like a vibration is caught in Izaya’s throat and he can’t steady it out of audibility; Shizuo can’t match the sound to the smirk he always pictures on Izaya’s face, is left feeling like he’s speaking to a stranger on the other end of the line.

“Yeah,” he says, falling back to direct sincerity as the best way to push his way through the odd fragility of the moment. “I was planning on it, anyway. I wasn’t going to visit anywhere else before I went home.”

“Oh,” Izaya says. “Okay.”

Shizuo pauses, just to see if there’s anything else forthcoming; when there’s not he asks, “Is that all?” to shatter the quiet before it has time to settle over the call again.

“Ah.” Izaya clears his throat, coughing briefly like he’s shaking some distraction out of his mind. “Yes. I was thinking of stopping by tomorrow, if you’ll still be in town.”

Shizuo huffs frustration again the phone. “I just said I would be.”

“Excellent.” Izaya’s voice has gone light again, is sliding up into the chirping register that never fails to grate irritation like electricity down the entire length of Shizuo’s spine. “I’ll drop by sometime in the morning, then, Shizu-chan.”

“Fine,” Shizuo says, still frowning unseeing at the wall in front of him. “Is that what you were calling about?”

“Yes,” Izaya says, still in that breathless light tone. “I was just wondering. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Alright,” Shizuo says. “See you tomorrow.”

Izaya hangs up fast, before Shizuo has a chance to pull the phone away from his ear; he can hear the _click_ of the line going dead from the other side, Izaya cutting off the connection almost before Shizuo is done speaking. Shizuo draws the phone back, frowns confusion at the screen and the flashing call duration that seems too short for the amount of tension he’s picked up across his shoulders. He can’t figure out why Izaya would call him, why he would wait so long to pick up on his return call; he can think of no reason for the strain under Izaya’s voice, or the odd tremble of sound when he asked if Shizuo would be staying. It was almost fear, almost panic, but neither of those are quite right for the tone; Shizuo’s still reaching for the adjective as his phone screen goes dark and he realizes how dim his room has become with the fall of night. He tosses his phone to the couch and moves towards the door to turn on the light before heading back towards the bathroom to hang his towel up on the rack by the door. It’s not until he’s halfway back across the room and pushing a hand through his mostly-dry hair that he finds the right word for it.

It was hope. Under the panic and the hesitation and the stress, Izaya had sounded painfully, desperately hopeful.


	9. Involuntary

Izaya arrives just before noon.

Shizuo’s been expecting him all morning, alternately checking his phone for a call or a text he somehow didn’t hear or trying to occupy himself with television or games on the screen of his phone. He doesn’t want to leave, doesn’t have anywhere he particularly wants to go and doesn’t want to be absent after telling Izaya he would be here, and he shouldn’t feel such an obligation to be present but he can’t shake it any more than he can shake the weight of guilt on his shoulders, the burden of self-judgment that is gaining power with every day he lingers in this unfamiliar city with nothing but Izaya to ground him to his sense of self. There’s no way to escape awareness of the other’s presence, less so now that Shizuo has committed to another span of days for no reason other than the itch of unresolved stress in the back of his head, and he doesn’t know what it is that he wants and doesn’t know what it is that he’s looking for but he knows he can’t leave, can all but feel the string of serendipity tying him more effectively to this location and to whatever mess he and Izaya have made between them than something more planned would have done. It feels like a last chance, feels like fate stepping in to push him towards -- Shizuo doesn’t know what, can’t imagine what resolution would even look like. There was a time he thought he knew, thought that Izaya’s blood on his hands and Izaya’s bones breaking under his fingers would soothe the itch of frustration that always prickles under his skin when he thinks of the other. But it didn’t, and it hasn’t, and with Izaya’s very existence framed by the evidence of Shizuo’s past actions all Shizuo can be sure he destroyed in their last fight was that destructive urge that he thought would be a permanent fixture between them. He thinks about it all morning, running his mental logic into tracks that are grooving deeper with every passing day, and by the time there’s a clear knock against the hotel room door Shizuo isn’t even pretending to be doing anything except staring out the window lost in his thoughts and the smoke from his cigarette.

“Morning, Shizu-chan,” Izaya lilts as soon as Shizuo opens the door. He’s leaning back in his wheelchair again, has his legs crossed into a casual line one atop the other, as if the advantage of height Shizuo has on him is inconsequential, as if he has claimed the upper hand by maintaining a closer approximation of calm than the other. “You haven’t been waiting long, I hope?”

“No,” Shizuo says without thinking, even though it’s not quite five minutes to noon, even though technically he’s been doing nothing all morning from an unwillingness to leave his hotel room even long enough to make a quick trip to the convenience store. It doesn’t feel like he’s been waiting as much as ruminating, turning familiar thoughts over in his mind as if they’re puzzle pieces that he has only just realized had been forced into a years-old incorrect configuration.

Izaya’s smile doesn’t waver, his slouch doesn’t shift, but there’s a shadow behind his eyes, a motion of his lashes that says this response was not exactly what he was hoping for. “Aren’t you going to invite me in? Or shall we have this whole visit out in the hallway?”

“Sure,” Shizuo says, as careless with his invitation as he was with his greeting. He steps out of the way of the door, sliding his hand free of the weight of it; it’s not until it starts to swing shut that he realizes his mistake and reaches out to stall the motion just shy of it hitting the side of Izaya’s chair. Izaya has a hand up himself, his fingertips skimming the door in expectation of the force; when Shizuo looks at him their eyes meet for a moment, something catching unspoken in the space between them before Izaya looks away and moves himself forward and out of range of the door. Shizuo lets it fall shut on its own as soon as Izaya is clear, not bothering to ease the weight of it slamming into place; the _bang_ isn’t very loud, but it feels like a physical weight against Shizuo’s chest, and he can see Izaya’s shoulders tense at the sound for a moment before he collects himself enough to toss his head back into the pseudo-casual pose he had when he came in.

“You went with the budget room, I see,” he says, moving forward and into the narrow space of the main room while Shizuo lingers at the door. Izaya’s not looking at him; he’s considering the room instead, looking over the few pieces of furniture and the handful of personal items Shizuo brought with him with a speed that Shizuo suspects to be deliberately dismissive. “Doesn’t Tom-san pay you enough to afford a nicer suite than this?”

“This is fine,” Shizuo informs the back of Izaya’s chair. “I just need a place to sleep at night and a shower.”

Izaya huffs a laugh. “You really are a--”

Shizuo can hear him catch himself, can hear the amused lilt of the other’s words skid out in his throat as he closes his mouth on the _beast_ that would have finished the sentence before. There’s a pause, a moment of silence that goes tense with anticipation between them both; and then Izaya laughs without turning, the sound crackling like static in his throat.

“Human,” he says, the word deliberate and so forced Shizuo can hear the effort under it as Izaya speaks. His head turns enough for Shizuo to see his profile and the dark of his hair falling over his eyes. “This is going to take some getting used to.”

Shizuo doesn’t respond. He just stares at the line of Izaya’s shoulders, at the dark of his hair shadowing his face, and after a moment Izaya looks away again to resume his slow exploration of Shizuo’s hotel room. There’s not much space, especially with the extra width of his wheelchair to contend with; even moving slowly it takes him less than a minute to cover the distance before he’s pivoting to look back at Shizuo from across the room. The distance never seemed like much to Shizuo when he was in here alone; now, with Izaya staring at him from across the length of it, it feels like miles, feels like an uncrossable chasm between them, and still Izaya’s too close, he’s so near that Shizuo can see the texture of his lashes if he looks, can taste the metallic smell of his skin in the air like Shizuo’s own cigarette smoke.

“Why are you here?” he finally asks, not with any particular aggression on the question; it just seems easier to ask Izaya for an answer in case the other’s response gives him some insight into his own, gives him some traction for the reason he is still lingering in this unfamiliar town instead of returning to the comfortable safety of Ikebukuro.

Izaya’s eyebrow goes up, his mouth catching on a smirk that doesn’t touch the steady focus in his eyes. “I told you I would be. Weren’t you expecting me?”

“That’s not what I mean.” Shizuo flexes his fingers, working for traction that doesn’t exist against the smoke-laden air in the room. “Why are you _here_? Why are you visiting me?”

“I told you that too,” Izaya says, but his smile is starting to fade. He shifts his weight, uncrossing the angle of his legs so his feet are braced flat against the support of the chair. “I owe you an apology.”

“You apologized,” Shizuo says, a flat statement of fact rather than an admission of the sincerity or insincerity of that same apology. “Are you waiting for me to tell you you’re forgiven or something?”

“Don’t be absurd,” Izaya says without so much as flickering his eyelashes. “Mistaking you for a monster was hardly my only mistake.”

Shizuo huffs a humorless laugh. “No kidding.”

Izaya’s chin comes up, his eyes narrowing against the deadpan edge on Shizuo’s tone. “My love for humanity was impure,” he declares, recrossing his legs as he slouches farther back in his chair. “I was trying to express my love from a distance, where I wouldn’t be personally affected by it. My error with regards to you personally was simply a result of that.” He sounds like he’s lecturing, like a professor dictating to a class; there’s no suggestion of discomfort in his expression, as if he’s talking about someone and something long since lost to history. “I went about things the wrong way in Ikebukuro. It’s only reasonable that the people and the city would have rejected me as they did. Things are different here, Shizu-chan.”

“Are they,” Shizuo says.

“Yes.” Izaya’s tone is offhand, as if he doesn’t notice the disbelief in Shizuo’s voice. He turns his head to gaze out the window, bracing an elbow against the arm of his chair so he can support his chin against his hand. “I’ve moved on with my life. Ikebukuro is behind me, now. It would be pleasant to see you off amicably, whenever you choose to leave the city, but if you would prefer that I go I wouldn’t--”

“Stop,” Shizuo says, the word rumbling to a weird low note in his throat, and Izaya stops, his voice cutting off as instantly as if Shizuo’s speech has severed his vocal chords entirely. His head turns, his attention skidding back to Shizuo’s face, but Shizuo doesn’t notice the adrenaline-quick jerk of the other’s head, doesn’t notice the way Izaya’s hand falls slack over the arm of his chair as the color drains from his face. His hands are curling to fists at his side, the tension in his body urging him forward without conscious thought; when he takes a step it eats away at that impossible distance between them, crossing the chasm as if it weren’t there at all. “Stop _lying_.”

Izaya’s eyes go wider as Shizuo comes closer, his shoulders tilting farther back against the support of his chair with every step Shizuo takes. Shizuo can see the color under the dark of his gaze, can pick out the suggestion of crimson under the shadows that are all he ever pictures in his memory. There’s strain all across the line of Izaya’s shoulders, his fingers are catching to cling to the arms of his chair as Shizuo closes the distance between them; but Shizuo doesn’t notice that, doesn’t see anything beyond the recognition of Izaya in front of him and the incomprehensibility of the other’s words in his ears.

“You’re not _different_ ,” he growls, feeling the satisfaction of the words spilling to heat in his chest as they turn over on familiar frustration, on anger pinned close to the comfort of justification like fuel for the flame purring in his chest. “How is this any different than in Ikebukuro? It’s been two years and you haven’t changed at _all_.”

“I have,” Izaya says, but there’s no strength to the words at all, there’s no certainty under the sound of his voice. He’s still staring at Shizuo, his whole body tilted back against his chair like he can’t hold himself up; he’s clinging to the support of the arms, now, his shoulders straining with the effort of holding himself upright. “I’m different, I--”

“You’re _not_ ,” Shizuo insists, and Izaya’s voice falls to silence, the shrill edge of it failing like fog dispersing before summer sunlight. There’s barely a few feet between them now; the distance has evaporated as completely as Izaya’s voice, leaving just a gap small enough for Shizuo to step over at once, small enough for Izaya’s knife to cross, if this were still before, if they were still in Ikebukuro. “You’re in a wheelchair and you say you’re sorry but you’re still doing what you _always_ did.”

“Stop.”

It’s a whisper, barely loud enough for Shizuo to hear, minimal enough for the dull roar of anger in his ears to drown out. If he weren’t looking right at Izaya’s bloodless face he wouldn’t realize the other had spoken at all, and it’s nothing like enough force to stand up to Shizuo’s frustration, to resist the strength that has levelled walls, that has twisted metal and torn concrete and shattered both their bones more than once. “You’re still watching and meddling just like you did in Ikebukuro,” he says instead, feeling the words ring with sincerity on his tongue as he steps closer, throwing them like they’re a blow, like they’re a weapon.

Izaya doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t move at all. He’s still staring at Shizuo, his eyes wide and unblinking, his lips parted on the force of his breathing. “Stop,” he says again, but Shizuo doesn’t hear it at all this time, barely sees Izaya’s lips start moving before he’s leaning in, closing the gap between them with a familiarity too deeply ingrained for the years apart to shake. Izaya’s lower now than he was, sitting instead of standing like he used to, but Shizuo’s tipping in anyway, fixing in to weight the force of his glare with the physical proximity that always runs so electric through his blood.

“You’re not _admitting_ your mistakes,” he grates out, tasting honesty like blood on his tongue. “You’re _hiding_ from them.”

“ _Stop_ ,” Izaya gasps, sounding breathless, sounding like he’s drowning with nothing around them but air. It’s sounds nothing like him, sounds like panic made raw and choking in his throat, and it’s enough to stall out the rising thunder of rage in Shizuo’s veins. He blinks, red-hazed fury clearing from his vision, and then he sees Izaya, _really_ sees him without the distraction of his own frustration to blind him. Izaya is holding to the arms of his chair, he’s leaning back against the support of the seat behind him, but it’s not a slouch, it’s not languid affectation; he’s _cringing_ , pressing so hard against the support he looks like he’s trying to force himself right through the barrier out of sheer animal desperation to be farther away. His eyes are wide on Shizuo’s face, his breathing hiccuping in his chest like he’s sobbing or suffocating, Shizuo’s not sure which, and his face is so utterly drained of blood Shizuo feels like he can almost see the tracery of bone under skin gone translucent with cold panic. Shizuo’s leaning far in, he realizes, tipped forward to invade Izaya’s personal space, and there’s room behind the chair for the other to retreat but from the way he’s holding to the arms of his wheelchair Shizuo doesn’t think there’s enough self-awareness left in him to manage the motion to reach for the controls.

Shizuo can feel his shoulders slump, can feel guilt cramp his breathing as all the heat across his skin goes icy with horror. “Izaya--” he starts, his hand lifting in reflexive attempt at comfort; and Izaya flinches sideways, his whole body veering so far to the side to dodge Shizuo’s touch that he nearly falls out of the support of his chair. Shizuo freezes, his hand still halfway to Izaya’s shoulder and his heart hammering in his chest; but Izaya doesn’t see, Izaya has his eyes squeezed shut and his shoulders hunched hard like he’s bracing for a blow. Shizuo can hear how hard he’s breathing, can hear the catch of panic shoving the rhythm off-balance and into wheezing desperation; if he looks he can see Izaya’s whole body trembling with tension, like he’s bracing himself against some earthquake only he can feel.

“Sorry,” Shizuo blurts, too-little too-late, and draws his hand back, stumbling to his feet and backing across the floor and away. Izaya doesn’t ease, doesn’t even open his eyes to acknowledge Shizuo’s motion; he looks like he’s frozen, like time has stopped for him entirely except for the choking inhales in his throat, except for the drag of sound that Shizuo can hear speeding faster and faster like Izaya’s trying to suffocate himself on an overabundance of air instead of the lack of it. Shizuo’s heart is pounding, secondhand panic setting in as Izaya’s trembling starts to get the better even of the straining hold he has on his wheelchair; he takes another step back, another, all the way across the room until his shoulders hit the far wall, until he can’t fit any more space between the two of them.

“Sorry,” he says again, and it’s not loud enough for Izaya to hear and Izaya doesn’t shift to acknowledge it but Shizuo is saying it anyway, breathing it over and over again like it’s some kind of a mantra to undo whatever it is he did to bring this on. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.” The apology doesn’t seem strange now, doesn’t seem odd even with Izaya clear in front of him; it’s not an apology to Orihara Izaya, it’s an apology for himself, a plea for understanding from the world at large for the kind of misstep he hasn’t made since he was in middle school, since he shattered the kindness in a woman’s eyes in the process of trying to save her from a threat.

Shizuo doesn’t know how long they stay like that. His heart is pounding doubletime in his chest, racing through an adrenaline-fueled pace as familiar as metal crumpling under his fingers, as ordinary as the shout of Izaya’s name in his throat. But he’s cold, now, chill as the nighttime air instead of hot with the fire of his own incandescent anger, and in the end it’s Izaya who moves first, who gasps a long, desperate inhale and shifts the crouched angle of his shoulders. He keeps his head down, keeps his hair weighting in front of his face, but his fingers ease on the arms of the chair, and his breathing gasps out of the hyperventilation he was sustaining, and some of the incoherent panic in Shizuo’s mind eases enough to let him shudder through a sigh of relief.

“Izaya-kun,” he starts, pitching his voice as deliberately soft as he can; but Izaya jerks at the sound, his shoulders tense again, and Shizuo is shutting his mouth well before Izaya hisses “ _Don’t_ ” more like a sob than a command. They’re silent again for a moment; then “Don’t talk,” with Izaya’s head still bowed, with his fingers still pressing hard like he’s trying to brace himself to stillness. “Stay there.”

Shizuo stays. He doesn’t speak, and he doesn’t move; he just holds perfectly still where he is, with the wall pressed flush to his shoulders as Izaya slowly eases one hand from the desperate hold he has on his chair and manages to reach for the controls so he can move. It’s a slow process, painful to see and worse to hear when it’s underlined by the effort of Izaya’s breathing still coming raw and shaking like he’s been running a marathon; but Shizuo doesn’t offer to help, and Izaya doesn’t so much as glance at him. He keeps his gaze on the floor in front of him instead, keeps his head bowed low, and when he does raise his chin it’s only as he approaches the door, and only enough so he can reach out and pull the weight of it open. Shizuo watches him hold the door open, watches him maneuver past the entrance and out into the hallway; it’s not until the door has slammed shut in Izaya’s wake that Shizuo lets the tension in his knees go, and lets himself slide down to sit on the floor instead of leaning against the wall. He tips his shoulders forward, curves his spine in over his knees, and when he lifts a hand to his head it’s reflexive, a futile attempt to spare himself from the guilt settling over him as if he’s trying to ward off the edge of a knife.

All things considered, he’d rather take the blade.


	10. Guilt

Shizuo tries calling an hour later. It takes him a while to convince himself to get back to his feet, and longer after that to pace out the space of his room until he feels like a person again; guilt is heavy in him and dragging unpleasantly at the back of his mind, but he can’t gain enough traction on events to even figure out what precisely it is he should feel bad about. His burst of adrenaline has cooled, has twisted unused on itself until it’s turned to the cold weight of nausea low in Shizuo’s stomach, and he can’t talk himself back to calm with that unpleasant knot weighting all his actions into lethargic discomfort. It’s strange to lack the relief of violence for his body, strange to feel the tension of an expected fight cramping unused in his muscles; but that’s all almost comfort compared to the memory of Izaya’s expression as he flinched away from Shizuo’s touch. Shizuo can’t stop playing it over and over in his head, can’t stop pulling up the wide-eyed horror that was so clear across Izaya’s face; he doesn’t understand how he didn’t recognize it immediately, how he could have mistaken it for tension or arrogance or anything at all other than the petrified terror that it was as soon as he took his first step forward. The words he threw feel like blows in retrospect; what he thought was an argument had been nothing more than abuse, nothing but him throwing an attack at someone as patently unable to match him verbally as he is physically. It makes Shizuo feel sick to think about, even with the repeated desperate justification in his head of _I didn’t know, I didn’t realize, I didn’t think_ because he _should_ have, he should have closed his mouth and stopped his movement and really _seen_ instead of letting his adrenaline get the better of him, instead of lashing out with an attack better suited to Izaya himself that to what Shizuo is used to offering. He paces the width of his room over and over, too caught in the tangle of his own thoughts to even consider going outside where there’s more space, but the guilt refuses to lessen, just settles in deep at the back of his thoughts like it’s making itself at home along his spine, and by the time the lingering metallic tang of Izaya’s presence has faded from the air Shizuo knows he’s going to find no relief for this on his own.

He calls first. He could send a text, could type some form of apology into the message box and send it across the distance to Izaya; but he doesn’t know what to say, can feel his words going clumsy and insincere every time he tries to compose something, and besides there’s some faint panic in him that Izaya is still gasping for air somewhere, some part of him that wants the reassurance of the other’s breathing steady and level and calm to prove that he’s okay after all. But the call goes straight to voicemail without even attempting a ring, and Shizuo hangs up before the pre-recorded message in a generic female voice has run through to the end. The immediate failure of the call says Izaya’s phone is off, or at least the one Shizuo has for him is; but he tries texting anyway, his initial hesitation lost in the grating frustration of failure as he sends a brief message of _Sorry. You okay?_ before he can overthink the implication of the words. There’s no response to that either, and Shizuo should have expected that but he’s just frustrated instead, he can feel the tension of determination that worked him up to calling in the first place settling to join all that unused adrenaline along his shoulders and the curve of his spine.

He goes out for a walk, after a while. His phone is turned on in his pocket, the ringer up loud enough that he’ll hear it even over the murmur of the crowd, and when he glances at the strangers around him it’s always in response to a fur cuff or the shine of sunlight off dark hair. Shizuo doesn’t know what he’ll do if he sees Izaya -- he likes to think he’d let the other pass him with nothing between them but his reassurance of the other’s renewed composure -- but he’s not sure even in himself, and it doesn’t matter in the end anyway. It’s never Izaya, never even close enough that Shizuo’s heart swoops with the possibility, and after a few hours he gives up on his phone too and leaves it untouched in his pocket for the distance of miles as he wanders his way back to his room.

He opens the windows when he gets back inside. The air outside is warm, heavy with the burden of summertime heat, but the fresh air is worth the humidity. Shizuo sheds his vest and his tie, undoes his shirt to drape over the back of the desk chair before he lights a cigarette and settles himself to lean against the edge of the window while he smokes himself to some kind of calm. The routine does help, even if it can’t assist with the ultimate cause of his tension, and the shift of a breeze from the window catches at the sweat along his arms to cool it to comfort as he pulls his phone from his pocket again. There’s no message, text or voicemail either one, but Shizuo wasn’t really expecting one; he opens his call history instead, backtracks to that unnamed number that doesn’t need a contact for him to recognize, and pushes _Call_ as he stares idly out the window at the wall of the adjacent hotel.

He’s expecting to go to voicemail again, to get that electronic message or maybe even a notification that the number has been disconnected entirely. But there’s the pattern of a ringtone instead, the chime of sound to indicate his attempt is making it through to hearing after all, and Shizuo takes a breath as his shoulders tense on something that is very nearly hope. The phone rings again -- a third time -- and Shizuo is just starting to feel his stomach sink with resignation when there’s a click, the chime of the ring cutting off halfway through to give way to a sigh made hazy on static. “What do you want, Shizu-chan?”

Shizuo huffs an exhale against the receiver of the phone, the breath rushing out of his lungs as his heart tries to plummet and soar at the same time. “Izaya-kun.”

“Yes.” Izaya sounds exhausted, sounds so utterly drained it’s hard to pick out any emotion at all from the flat of his voice; he sounds like it’s the middle of the night and not early afternoon, like he’s been pulled unwillingly to consciousness by the demand of the call. “What do you want.”

Shizuo opens his mouth to speak -- and closes it again, all the words in his head flickering out to uselessness as fast as he reaches for them. There’s an apology there somewhere, the weight of guilt demanding that he put some kind of voice to the stress along his spine, but he can’t figure out how to frame sincerity around the unfamiliar words. He’s never been good at this, even in Ikebukuro, even with people not Izaya; the task of offering sincere apology to the other now, here, over the phone with the breeze of an unfamiliar city against his skin, is so monumental as to be impossible. Shizuo’s feelings have no bearing on it, or if they do they’re only a detriment; it might be easier to put words to _sorry_ if he felt it less intensely, if he didn’t feel the pressure of guilt so hard against his heart any apology would be more a plea for absolution than a selfless statement.

“Are you okay?” he asks instead, the statement mundane and pointless but the best he can offer, the closest he can come to coherency without choking himself on his own stress.

Izaya’s sigh is loud against the receiver, still flat and drained of emotion more than deliberately stripped of it. “No.” It’s not a plea for sympathy; it’s just a statement of fact, bare honesty left to fall like lead in the space between them. “Anything else?”

“Did you make it home?” Shizuo asks, falling back to the inane phrasing of small talk as his throat tightens, as his heart starts to pound with the need to fix this, to change something, to undo his actions of hours before so he can figure out what he should have, could have done. “Will you be alright?”

“I’m in my hotel room,” Izaya says, precision so stark as to be aggression of its own variety. “I’ll survive.”

Shizuo cringes at the last. What would be a flippant understatement with a lighter tone sounds like a bare-minimum statement of fact here, like Izaya is unable to speak to anything more positive than the flat neutrality of his continued existence. “Izaya-kun, I didn’t mean to--” He stalls, caught on the memory of Izaya flinching back, of Izaya’s voice breaking on desperation, of Izaya’s breathing panting hard and frantic in his chest. “--Scare you.”

It’s a stupid way to end the sentence. The words are so far from encompassing the adrenaline of that moment that Shizuo can feel the inadequacy on his tongue, can feel it like a void in his chest. He expects Izaya to laugh, expects the drag of mockery over the other’s voice; but there’s just silence for a moment, Izaya so quiet on the other end of the line that Shizuo starts to wonder if he actually spoke at all or only thought he did. His heart is clamouring in his chest, his guilt demanding voice against the backdrop of Izaya’s silence, and when he finally opens his mouth it’s with the feeling of stepping over a precipice, of flinging himself out into some unknown space with no sense of what’s waiting at the bottom of his fall. “I’m sorry.”

Izaya’s sigh is long, drawn-out, so heavy Shizuo can feel his own shoulders slump with sympathetic exhaustion.  “Just go,” he says, in that same flat tone with less energy in it than the electronic message of his voicemail had. “Just go, Shizu-chan.” There’s a _click_ , a crackle of electronics flickering off; and Shizuo is left with nothing but silence from the phone against his ear.


	11. Lead

Shizuo doesn’t sleep well that night. His thoughts are too full, his mind fretting over memories and guilt and regrets that seem to span a lifetime; it’s as if in lieu of handling the impossibility of the recent past his mind has skipped back in time to find some earlier turning point, something that could have been different enough to avert the way Izaya had crumpled in on himself this morning, the way he had twisted away from Shizuo with nothing but animal fear behind his eyes. Shizuo travels backwards in time, through the last few days and over the gap of years to their last fight; but he can’t see a change there, can’t convince himself that he would have reacted differently at any step along the path that pushed the two of them together into a conflict so predetermined it looks like fate in his memory. He has to go back farther, for that, has to invent a world without the tear of a knife across a new high school uniform and without the edge of a smile so perfectly calibrated to push him to anger it might as well have been made just for him, and even then he can’t see it, he loses his grasp on what-might-have-been as soon as he finds it. In retrospect everything looks deliberate, everything looks as unchangeable as the steps of a long-rehearsed dance, and come the morning he’s tired enough that even the edge of guilt in him has faded under the sheer burden of exhaustion. He thinks about calling Kadota again, in the early hours of the morning before the sun has yet come up; but this is more than a casual chat, this goes well beyond the easy acquaintanceship that the two of them have with each other. Shizuo considers it while he’s working through his first cigarette of the morning and waiting for the sun to come up, turning over names in his head as if there’s really any question at all; and then he puts his shoes on, and goes out to pace the main street, and sends Celty a text.

 _Celty._ _I need someone to talk to. Do you have some time?_

Shizuo was worried he might have interrupted some part of Celty or Shinra’s morning routine; he’s ready to wait for some time for a response, in case Celty is busy or maybe doesn’t have her phone turned on yet. But the reply comes immediately, seconds after his own message was sent out: _Sure, of course, is everything alright?_ Shizuo can almost hear Celty’s stress coming through the message, like it’s catching the edge of shrillness on the voice she doesn’t have, and he responds just as quickly with _Yeah, I’m fine, I just ran into someone I didn’t expect_ and then, in a separate message: _It’s kind of a long story. Let me get through the whole thing first before you react._

It takes him almost an hour. The texts are relatively quick to compose in and of themselves, even while Shizuo is wandering aimlessly around unfamiliar streets, but the story is harder, right from the initial setup of _A few days ago I saw Orihara Izaya_ that sets Shizuo into the inevitable chain of events that have led him to a pair of sleepless nights and a burden of painful guilt he thought he would never feel. Celty is quiet as Shizuo requested, offering no response at all to any of the chain of messages he sends; if she were someone else he would suspect she had left completely, that he had lost his assumed audience somewhere in the tangle of information he is offering and the too-long pauses between his messages as he struggles to compose his thoughts into coherency. But he knows Celty, and in the end when he says _I don’t know what to do. Do you have any ideas?_ it’s with full expectation of receiving an answer within the next five minutes.

It does take her some time. Shizuo can understand that; it’s hard enough to turn over the situation in his own head, and he’s had days to work himself into some kind of calm with the whole experience. Finally she offers, _Wow_ , all by itself, like a breath of exhausted almost-relief. _That’s a lot to take in. I don’t even know where you should start._

 _I know._ Shizuo fishes another cigarette out of his pocket and set it to his lips unlit more for the habit of the motion than anything else. _I feel really bad about yesterday._

 _I never thought_ you _would be worrying about Izaya’s feelings._

That makes Shizuo grin, even with the stress knotting his shoulders uncomfortably tense under his shirt. _Yeah, well, that makes two of us._

 _Do you mind if I tell Shinra?_ That comes first, followed by only the barest pause before the follow-up: _I won’t if you don’t want me to, of course_ and another _I just think he’d be interested to hear about it_ , and then, separately: _And he’d probably be happy to hear about Izaya again._ Finally, the last, as Shizuo is just starting his reply: _I’ll keep quiet if you’d prefer. I really appreciate you telling me and I don’t want to break your confidence._

 _It’s fine_ , Shizuo types, quickly, before Celty can work herself around to more unneeded backtracking. _Go ahead and tell Shinra, I don’t mind. I talked about it with Kadota too, it’s not like it’s a secret or anything._

 _Oh good_ , Celty offers back. _I wouldn’t have said anything if you didn’t want me to but it would have been hard. Sometimes I really think he can read my mind. You don’t think he was kidnapped by aliens and received high-tech futuristic brain scanning implants, do you?_

 _I doubt it_. Shizuo’s really smiling now, affectionate amusement winning out for the moment over his personal stress. _Thanks for listening. I’ll let you know what I end up doing._

 _Please do. I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help._ There’s a pause, a moment like Celty’s giving Shizuo time to add anything else, and then: _Good luck. We hope to see you soon, everyone misses you when you’re not around._

 _Sure they do_ , Shizuo types back, skeptical but touched nonetheless. _I’ll come home soon. Talk to you later._

 _Have a good day,_ Celty offers, and Shizuo pockets his phone in exchange for his lighter and finally lifts his head from the screen to see where he’s ended up. He’s across town from his hotel, as it turns out, in a part of the city he hasn’t seen before, but it’s easy to turn himself back around in the right direction for his return, and then it’s just a matter of navigating crosswalks and intersections of streets slowly gaining their usual burden of vehicles and pedestrians as the early-morning quiet gives way to the low hum of a crowd. He feels a little bit better, even with lack of sleep and that lingering uncertainty hanging over him; even without any clearly formed advice, it’s nice just to have someone to talk to, good to know that Celty and soon Shinra will be up-to-date on recent occurrences. It’s not until he’s stubbing out his cigarette and coming through the front door of his hotel that he considers the possibility that maybe Izaya didn’t want him to tell anyone, that maybe he should have asked the other’s permission before bringing the subject up with their mutual acquaintances. The idea stalls him in the middle of the hallway, leaves him frowning unseeing at the wall as he turns the thought over in his head, and by the time he moves forward again to continue towards his room he can feel the pressure of guilt collecting against his chest again, the confusion at having misstepped without thinking growing against his ribcage like it’s trying to choke him on his own uncertainty. It’s an unpleasant feeling, reminding him too much of the aftereffects of his childhood tantrums, when he stood amidst the wreckage of his own frustration and felt the burden of responsibility settling onto his shoulders, and it keeps him frowning down at his feet as he turns the corner to the hall leading towards his own room.

“Welcome back,” a voice calls, and Shizuo recognizes the lilt of it before he’s jerked his head up to make eye contact, before the speaker appends “Shizu-chan” with the deliberate taunting drawl that would give him away even were the nickname not enough by itself. Izaya is sitting in front of Shizuo’s door, leaning back against the support of his wheelchair at an angle reminiscent of his deliberate casualness the day before, but his eyes are tired, the weight of his hands more a burden against the arms of his chair than elegant disregard. Shizuo hesitates at the end of the hall, adrenaline and uncertainty hitting him in equal parts to lock him where he stands; and Izaya offers him a smile, and if it doesn’t quite make it to his eyes at least it appears to be making the attempt.

“Sorry to startle you,” he says, sounding almost sincere on the words. When he looks down it’s to clear his throat, to cough himself out of some kind of rasp on his throat from emotion or exhaustion, Shizuo doesn’t know which one. “Do you have some time?” Shizuo nods, wordless affirmative easier to find than coherency, but Izaya’s not looking at him; it’s not until the other lifts his head to look up through his hair that Shizuo realizes his mistake and finds a “Sure” in the back of his throat.

Izaya smiles again. It’s a little shaky, still falls shy of the dark of his eyes, but at least it’s a smile, and that’s better than Shizuo had any reason to expect. “Good,” he says, and pushes away from Shizuo’s door to roll himself down the hallway. “Let me buy you a hot chocolate.”

It’s not a question, and Shizuo doesn’t answer. He just steps to the side of the hallway, making space enough for Izaya to pass him, and it’s not until the other pauses and glances back that Shizuo moves forward to fall into step alongside the wheelchair.

This far beyond his depth, Shizuo thinks it might be best to let someone else, even Izaya, take the lead.


	12. Open

Shizuo lets Izaya pick the table at the coffee shop they go to. It’s a tiny place, far smaller than the last one they met at and almost deserted in spite of the midmorning hour; there’s only three other people there, a college age student asleep over his laptop and a pair of older women discussing their children in the two armchairs in the corner, and Shizuo elects to stay to pick up the drinks rather than asking the single employee on duty to bring them out to the table. Izaya leaves him to it, maneuvering through the more cramped pathways with a little more difficulty than Shizuo saw in the other shop, and Shizuo doesn’t watch him, turns his attention instead to the soothingly competent motions of the employee behind the counter as she handles the espresso machine while the milk for Shizuo’s hot chocolate is warming. Shizuo lets himself drift as she works through the pattern of making their drinks, his mind wandering out-of-focus rather than landing on something with any real intention, and by the time their drinks are done the barista has to push them all the way across the counter before he shakes himself out of his distraction enough to thank her and collect the pair of matched cups. His drink is in a mug this time, and Izaya’s lacks the saucer it had at the last coffee shop, but there’s no chance of mixing them up even without the bitter aroma wafting from Izaya’s compared to the milk-sweet chocolate of Shizuo’s. Shizuo steadies one in each hand, making sure he’s not going to spill them on the way across the room, and then he turns to make his way carefully to where Izaya is settled at a table in the corner.

“Thanks,” Izaya says as Shizuo approaches, keeping his gaze focused on the cup Shizuo offers and reaching to take it before the other can lower it to the table. Shizuo moves to the seat on the other side, pulls it back to make space to sit down, and then he’s settling his cup on the edge of the table and he can’t help but look up at Izaya on the other side from him. Izaya’s not looking at him; he’s staring down into the mug of coffee, the shadow of his hair hiding too much of his expression for Shizuo to get a clear read on it. He has both hands pressed against the sides of the cup, his fingers caught to frame the curve of the ceramic between his palms even though to Shizuo the cup is too hot to comfortably touch except via the handle still caught in his fingers. He tries imitating Izaya for a moment before drawing his hands back immediately with a flinch from the burn; he wonders if it’s a tolerance for heat Izaya has, if maybe his hands are oddly cold in spite of the sunshine outside, if the coffee is somehow less hot than Shizuo’s own drink. It’s not until Izaya shifts in his chair to cross his legs that Shizuo considers the possibility that the cup is just as hot as his own, that Izaya is voluntarily letting the burn under his skin instead of pulling away from it.

“They make good coffee here,” Izaya says then, his voice clear enough to cut right through Shizuo’s distracted attention to the fit of his fingers against the cup. When Shizuo looks up Izaya is still looking into his mug, gazing at the dark of the liquid like he’s seeing something in it beyond mere coffee. “It’s the best quality in the city.”

Shizuo frowns. “Why didn’t we meet here the first time?”

“Because this is my favorite coffee shop,” Izaya says, and then stops talking, as if the unintelligibility of his response actually carried enough meaning for Shizuo to parse. Izaya lifts his cup to his lips, takes a testing sip off the edge; Shizuo can still see steam rising from the surface of the liquid, but Izaya doesn’t flinch even at what must be burning hot coffee, just sighs and sets the cup back down on the table.

“It’s more than the wheelchair,” he says, abruptly enough that Shizuo can’t parse the meaning for a minute. Izaya glances up while Shizuo is still staring, meets the other’s gaze for a heartbeat before he returns his attention to his cup. “You asked what was wrong with me, before.”

“Oh,” Shizuo says. “Yeah.”

“It’s not just my legs.” Izaya’s working the cup between his hands, twisting it back and forth like he’s trying to get a better grasp on the curve of it, and he’s not looking up, not putting anything but flat honesty on his tone. “I get...tense, sometimes, too.” That’s an even bigger understatement than the one Shizuo gave yesterday of _scared_ , but Shizuo doesn’t say anything; his heart is starting to pound harder in his chest, as if the caffeine in Izaya’s coffee is somehow spilling into his own veins untouched. “I met this guy who could pick up a vending machine, the last city I was in.” Izaya clears his throat, his mouth twisting on a smile utterly absent any sincere warmth. “I felt like I couldn’t breathe for five minutes until someone told me he could just pick it up and couldn’t throw it any distance at all.”

Shizuo’s blood prickles to cold, something between discomfort and guilt attempting to settle under his skin, but Izaya doesn’t wait for a response, doesn’t even lift his head to see the way Shizuo is looking at him. He just keeps talking, sounding almost calm but with a tension under his voice that Shizuo doesn’t want to look too closely at in case it cracks into the sudden hysteria of the day before. “Our fight was a very traumatic experience for me, Shizu-chan. Physically, of course, but there’s some mental side effects as well.” He takes a breath, takes another sip of too-hot coffee, uncrosses his legs. “I have them mostly under control, but seeing you in person is...upsetting, at times.”

Shizuo’s whole body is going chill, shivering with adrenaline he doesn’t know what to do with. “So you.” His voice comes out louder than he intends, dragging rough over the edge of confusion along his spine, and Izaya doesn’t flinch and doesn’t speak but his shoulders suddenly seem tenser, his fingers press harder against the cup in his hands. Shizuo looks at the angle of Izaya’s wrists, and shuts his mouth, and when he opens it again it’s with deliberate care, fighting the strain in his throat into a lower volume since he can’t manage to strip it free entirely. “You get...stressed, when I’m around?”

Izaya huffs a laugh towards his cup. “Something of an understatement,” he says, and lifts the mug to take another sip. “But yes. Let’s just call it that.”

“Oh.” Shizuo’s shoulders are tensing, curling forward under the weight of this sudden responsibility he didn’t even know he had. “All the time?”

“No.” Izaya’s still not looking up from his cup; Shizuo can see the shift of his throat as he swallows, as he frowns like he’s looking for words. “It’s fine sometimes. It’s better when I know it’s coming, and when it’s in--” He lifts a hand, waves it vaguely through the air. “Not my space.”

Shizuo frowns, more out of confusion than irritation. “Why are you seeing me at _all_?” he asks bluntly. “I could go back to Ikebukuro and leave you alone and you’d never have to deal with any of this.”

Izaya makes a face, a flicker of something almost a grimace that is gone before Shizuo can get a good read on it. “Not exactly. It’s not just you. I told you, before you came it was someone mentioning a guy with unreasonable strength. I don’t always know when it’s going to happen or what the cause is going to be, so I can’t just.” He waves his hand through the air again, a flippant dismissal of some half-formed idea. “Hide from it in my room all day.”

“It would be better without me, though,” Shizuo persists, keeping his voice as low as he can in spite of the force behind his words. “I’m making you worse by being here.”

Izaya’s expression flickers again. There’s a crease at his forehead, a frown at his lips; when he lifts his head his eyes are dark, tense at the corners like he’s holding himself back from something. Shizuo meets his gaze, doing his utmost to keep his expression as calm as possible, to keep _himself_ as calm as possible as he continues. “I should go back home. Why did you want me to stay?”

“ _You_ decided to stay longer,” Izaya snaps, his response quick enough to show some of the signs of the personality Shizuo remembers, some of the edge from years prior that has been so dulled since their unexpected reunion. “I didn’t--” He closes his mouth with the sentence half-formed, his lips twisting on irritation; then he ducks his head again, pulling away from the weight of eye contact so he can speak to his coffee again.

“I’m not getting any better,” he says down to his cup. “My legs aren’t, I mean. I might be able to walk again, if I worked at it, but the.” He makes a face again, his nose crinkling like he’s fighting with himself over something unpleasant. “A lot of the pain is psychosomatic.”

Shizuo frowns. “Is what?”

“Psychosomatic,” Izaya repeats, more slowly, and looks up to meet Shizuo’s gaze. His mouth twists at the corner, whatever personal hesitation he has giving way to amusement at Shizuo’s expense. “What, do you need some remedial vocabulary lessons, Shizu-chan?”

“Izaya--”

“It’s psychological,” Izaya says, so fast Shizuo doesn’t have time to gain any traction on the weight of the other’s name on his tongue. Izaya’s smile is gone like it was never there at all, his eyes dark as he holds Shizuo’s gaze; his hands are pressed tight against his cup, like he’s bracing himself in place against the fragile support of the ceramic. “At least some of it is. It’s hard to tell how much, right now.”

Shizuo stares across the table at Izaya. The heat of the cup in front of him is forgotten; all his attention is given over to working through the ramifications of what Izaya is telling him. “You’re feeling physical pain from the mental trauma?”

Izaya shifts his weight in his chair. “Basically.”

“But.” Shizuo blinks. “It’s been two years since then. Hasn’t it…”

“Fixed itself?” Izaya suggests with such an edge on the words that Shizuo’s voice dies to quiet instantly. “No, it hasn’t. Shocking though it may seem, these kinds of things don’t usually magically heal themselves, Shizu-chan.”

Shizuo frowns. “So you’re trying to make it _worse_? That doesn’t make any sense, why would you _want_ to be in pain?”

Izaya heaves a sigh and lets his head drop forward over his cup. His shoulders are slumped but they don’t look strained; it looks more like he’s losing the energy to sit up straight, like whatever steel was keeping him upright is caving to tip him forward against the edge of the table instead. “That’s not the point,” he says. Shizuo can’t see his eyes but his voice is edged on frustration, like Shizuo’s missing some obvious detail. “I can’t get better alone.” His hands tighten, his cup shifts; Shizuo can see tension in Izaya’s wrists even if it’s absented itself from the other’s shoulders. “I was willing to accept it as my…” His mouth quirks, his hand lifts to wave meaning into the air. “Punishment, let’s say. My comeuppance for my past mistakes. But then _you_ showed up. The last person I wanted to run into and the one _human_ ,” his tone dips the word into nearly an insult on his tongue, “I was most mistaken about.” His chin lifts, his gaze swings up; the twist of his mouth is dark, shadowed out of any true entertainment, but it’s sincere enough for Shizuo to see the shine of it behind Izaya’s unfathomable eyes. “Serendipitous, no?”

“It was a coincidence,” Shizuo says. “It was just chance.”

“It was a coincidence you saw me in the street,” Izaya corrects him. “But then you came looking for me, didn’t you?” It’s not a question, or not one that needs an answer; Shizuo just stares back at Izaya from across the width of the table as Izaya’s lips curve wider, as he lifts his cup to his mouth for long swallow of coffee.

“It was an impulse,” Shizuo tells him finally. “I don’t even know what I wanted to say.”

Izaya sets his cup down. “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “You saw me, and you came looking for me, and I had no intention of seeking you out but here you are anyway.” He flashes a smile, tips his head to the side so his hair falls out of his face. “If I can’t adapt to your human unpredictability, Shizu-chan, I can’t claim to have changed at all, now can I?”

Shizuo frowns. Izaya’s stare feels like an explosion winding itself tighter around his presence, a stick of dynamite awaiting the fuse of Shizuo’s presence to blow itself apart. “I don’t want you to use me to make yourself feel worse.”

“What if I used you to get better?” Izaya asks. It’s not an offer; it’s more a dare, a challenge to do the impossible. There’s no sincerity behind his eyes, no real trace of hope in his expression. There’s just the edge under his voice, the knife-edge of desperation in his throat as he recrosses his legs, as he presses his palms against the sides of his cup. “This is an opportunity, Shizu-chan.”

Shizuo huffs almost-a-growl. “An opportunity for _what_?”

“Resolution,” Izaya says immediately, so fast Shizuo feels like he’s reading from a script, like his own words were all but placed in his mouth by the other. “Between us. That’s what you want, isn’t it?” He’s still smiling but his eyes are going darker, his expression is tightening at the corners on rising anxiety. “That’s why you came looking for me.” It’s almost a statement, almost certainty; but then Izaya swallows, and his smile flickers, and when he says “Right?” it sounds like a plea for reassurance, like a lost child reaching for some kind of guidance from the universe itself.

Shizuo blinks, takes a breath against the unfamiliar pressure at his chest, like he’s inhaling past the weight of tears he doesn’t yet feel. His “Yeah” comes out rough on the edge of that emotion, grated to friction on the tension in his throat; but Izaya’s shoulders sag, and Izaya’s hands relax, and when he smiles relief it touches his eyes for the briefest of moments.

Shizuo’s never seen him look so human.


	13. Alternate

“So where do we start?”

It’s Shizuo who asks it, some minutes after Izaya turned the focus of his attention to his coffee cup and left Shizuo to make progress on his now comfortably-warm hot chocolate. He can’t speak to the quality of the coffee, having neither taste nor inclination to develop such, but his drink is delicious, better than it was at the other coffee shop, though he’s not sure if that’s a measure of actual quality or more a statement about his own peace of mind in the moment. Regardless of the cause, there’s something strangely comforting about drinking in silence with Izaya, without their usual stock of insults or injuries being traded across the space between them, and however strange it is in comparison with what they had in Ikebukuro Shizuo can appreciate the ease of it now, can let the quiet go gentle by mutual agreement instead of strained on the tension that has been there since that first conversation in Izaya’s hotel room. Finally it’s curiosity that pushes him to speak instead of stress, and when he does it’s by offering a question instead of an argument, the words made gentle on the sincerity of the inquiry.

“I don’t know,” Izaya answers, so immediately Shizuo wonders if he wasn’t waiting for the question, or if maybe their unvoiced thoughts weren’t falling into sync with each other without deliberate intention on either of their parts. Izaya reaches out to set his cup against the table; it’s over half-empty, now, Shizuo can hear the weight of it click as the other lets it go, and Izaya doesn’t keep his hands out over the table this time. He draws them in instead, letting them fall slack over the arms of his chair as he leans back as if settling himself into comfort; Shizuo can see the easy angle of the other’s wrists like proof of his current relaxation. “Not trying to kill each other is a good starting point.”

“Sure,” Shizuo agrees, because he can’t really argue with that, but he’s frowning still, aiming his expression at Izaya’s cup of coffee instead of at Izaya himself as he works through the details of his question in his own head. “But we can’t just act like we’ve been friends all this time. I don’t even _like_ you.”

“You’re not my favorite person in the world either,” Izaya deadpans from across the table. When Shizuo looks up at him his eyes are dark, his mouth showing no trace of amusement at what Shizuo suspects to be a fairly dramatic understatement. “All things considered this right now is more progress than I ever really expected us to make.”

“Me too,” Shizuo admits. “I thought about it after…” He trips over his phrasing, grimaces at the memory of their last interaction in Ikebukuro. “...You left.”

“After you tried and nearly succeeded in killing me, yes.” Shizuo’s head jerks up; Izaya’s watching him with his mouth quirking on something startlingly close to laughter, the dark in his eyes sparkling with the beginnings of amusement to match. “You don’t have to avoid talking about it on my behalf.”

Shizuo’s cheeks go warm, his mouth drags into a frown. “You _just_ said that being reminded...upsets you.”

“Sometimes it does.” Izaya reaches for his cup again without straining from his slouch against the support of his chair. “When I’m not expecting it, or when it’s something particularly evocative. But I’m sitting in a wheelchair across a cafe table from you, Shizu-chan. It’s already on my mind, it’s not like you making transparent attempts at euphemism is going to buffer my fragile psychological state.” He swallows a mouthful of coffee and replaces his cup against the table. “Just say it, dancing around the subject is worse than the alternative.”

“But I _did_ ,” Shizuo protests, feeling frustration spiking heat along his spine. “That’s exactly what I did yesterday and you freaked out.”

“Ah.” Izaya’s gaze drops to his hand still against his cup. His fingers tighten at the ceramic, curl in against the shape of it like he’s fitting it to his palm. “That was...a little different.” His forehead creases, his eyes tense; Shizuo can feel his shoulders hunch, can feel his body bracing itself for an explosive reaction like the one in his room yesterday. But then Izaya takes a deep breath, hard enough that Shizuo can hear it hissing in his throat, and shakes his head roughly like he’s trying to clear his thoughts by force before letting his hold on his cup go so he can draw his hand back to settle over the arm of his chair. When he lifts his head to meet Shizuo’s gaze his eyes are focused, his lips catching and quirking on a smile that looks far more sincere than Shizuo expected. “If you can keep your temper I’ll worry about the rest of it.”

Shizuo huffs a laugh more disbelieving than amused. “That’s a pretty big _if_.”

“I never said it would be easy,” Izaya shoots back. “But you said you wanted resolution, so unless you want to resume where we left off…?” He leaves the sentence hanging and raises an eyebrow as if he’s sincerely expecting Shizuo to answer. Shizuo closes his mouth, and holds Izaya’s gaze, and if he’s offering more of a glare than just eye contact it doesn’t seem to make a difference. Izaya still smirks the wider, still tilts his head like he’s confirming something, and when he speaks it’s to say, “That’s what I thought,” with so much of a self-satisfied purr under the words that it takes all Shizuo’s self-control to keep the burst of irritation along his spine from breaking free into his grip against his cup. It’s only his certainty that Izaya is expecting the ceramic to shatter that keeps his hold deliberately gentle, that stalls the rush of adrenaline at the top of his spine instead of rushing down his fingers; after a moment he even lets the cup go entirely and manages to talk himself into leaning back in his seat instead of hunching farther forward over the table. His heartrate eases, his breathing steadies, and then he looks back up and Izaya’s watching him with shadowed focus in his eyes.

“Impressive,” he says, without a trace of mockery in his tone or expression. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you rein yourself in like that before. You really _are_ calmer than you used to be.”

“It’s been years,” Shizuo says before he’s entirely processed Izaya’s words; then, as he catches up to the implication, “How do you know that?”

Izaya waves a hand through the air. “I still have a few sources,” he says with some trace of that old show of omniscience that always set Shizuo’s teeth on edge. But then, fast, before Shizuo has time to more than roll his eyes: “You thought about me after our fight?”

“What?” Shizuo blurts, his frustration derailed by this abrupt subject change. “Oh. Yeah.”

Izaya’s mouth drags up at the corner. “Relishing in your triumph over the infection in your city?”

“ _No_ ,” Shizuo growls, and then, more gently, “No,” his attention sliding off Izaya’s face and down to the weight of their cups against the table. His is off-center, moved far off to the edge of the table like he’s clearing his line of sight to the other; Izaya’s is precisely between them, like he’s placed it there to line up exactly in the center of the space between them.

“No,” Shizuo repeats. “I started thinking about the past.” He glances up, expecting a jab about getting nostalgic or reminiscing about the violence of his childhood; but Izaya’s just staring at him, his gaze unreadable and mouth relaxed into almost-a-frown, like he’s forgotten to control his expression. Shizuo stares back, feeling his spine prickle into something that’s not quite anger and not quite panic but something equidistant between the two, warmth instead of hot or cold either one. “When we met, back in high school.”

“I remember,” Izaya allows, still without a trace of a smile at his mouth. “You hated me on sight.”

Shizuo huffs a laugh that feels more sincere than he expected. “Well, yeah. You came at me with a knife, it wasn’t like I was going to feel warm and fuzzy towards you after that.”

Izaya’s eyebrows go up. “Is that how you remember it?”

Shizuo’s forehead creases, his mouth weights into a frown. “What are you talking about? Yes, of course that’s how I remember it, that’s how it _was_. I mean, I’m sure we saw each other in the halls before that but--”

“No,” Izaya cuts him off, leaning forward out of his chair so he can brace an arm across the table. “I’m talking about the same thing you are, when Shinra introduced us after school while you were in the middle of one of your brawls.”

“They were not--”

“Yes, they were,” Izaya says, so calmly Shizuo can’t find the traction to get irritated about the statement. Besides, he suspects the word to be more accurate than he’d like it to be. “You were busy laying waste to whatever you could lay your hands on and Shinra and I waited at the edge of the destruction zone for you to notice us.” His mouth is curving onto the start of a smile, his eyes oddly soft as he watches Shizuo’s face. “Remember?”

Shizuo remembers. It’s vague, the way his fights are always vague after the fact, once the adrenaline-haze has cleared from his mind to leave him trembling in a body bleeding and aching from the destruction caused by the anger that took hold of him and made use of his too-fragile self, but that fight was particularly memorable for the follow-up, enough that he can call it up in his mind now: the sound of clapping to draw his attention back to an unexpected audience, the hunch across his shoulders as he turned to look, the matched pair of Shinra’s uncannily-cheerful smile and Izaya, before Shizuo had learned to hate him, before he was anything more than a pair of dark eyes and a smirk like a taunt.

“It was impressive,” Izaya drawls, and it’s odd how much like his younger self he sounds, as if the years that have spanned their too-volatile relationship have done nothing to dampen the purr of his voice over the words. “Shinra told me about you but I didn’t really believe the stories until I saw you for myself.”

“Yeah,” Shizuo growls. “And then you came at me with a _knife_.”

“Not true,” Izaya says. “I mean, I did, yes. But I wasn’t the one who acted first.”

Shizuo’s frown is deepening. He can feel it dragging at the corners of his mouth, weighting his whole expression into the itch of confusion. “I never touched you.”

“‘You piss me off,’” Izaya says, his voice dropping into a low range that Shizuo recognizes immediately as an imitation of his own frustrated tone. “I hadn’t even said anything to you and you were ready to pick a fight.”

Shizuo’s skin prickles as if with a chill, as if the memory Izaya is calling up carries the burden of temperature with it. He’s only ever recalled up the burn of a knife tearing through fabric and skin, the glint of the sunset off Izaya’s grin and the edge of the blade in his hand as he smirked a challenge; he had all but forgotten about that first rush of irritation, about the words as much self-conscious frustration at being seen in the middle of the fights he hates as true dislike of Izaya himself. He had been cold with fading adrenaline, shaky and bruised and tired and miserable, and then he had turned to the sound of _encouragement_ , to mocking applause from someone who had managed a smile at the devastation that Shizuo could never find anything for but a scowl and the ache of distaste running so deep in his veins it might as well have been for his very self more than the wreckage of peace he leaves around him. He hadn’t thought through his words; he thinks they must have been half lingering adrenaline from the recently-ended fight, thinks they might have been more for himself than for Izaya in the first place. But Izaya remembers, Izaya can recite them so clearly Shizuo’s skin goes cold like he’s hearing a recording, and Izaya braces an elbow against the table and lifts a hand to rest against his chin.

“I don’t mean to say it was your fault,” he allows, still watching Shizuo with that absolute focus, with his mouth still holding to that smile that’s not-quite sharp enough to pass for his usual amused smirk. “I certainly landed the first blow. But you were the one who rejected me first, Shizu-chan.” He reaches for his cup, traces along the curve of the ceramic with his fingertips without picking up the weight of it. “Who knows how things would have turned out if you hadn’t?”

Shizuo doesn’t have an answer for that. He just stares back at Izaya, watching the other’s smile pull wider until he lifts his cup from the table and brings it to his mouth, tilting his head back so he can down the rest of the liquid in one long swallow. Izaya glances back up as he sets his cup down, his eyes catching shadow from the fall of his hair in front of his face, and when he smiles again it has all the snap and bite of the expressions Shizuo always pictures him with.

For once, Shizuo doesn’t feel like punching the smirk off his face.


	14. Insincere

They go back to the original shop the next day. Shizuo had suggested returning to the second option as they paused on the sidewalk outside to work through the awkward farewells of not-quite-enemies; but Izaya had smiled with unvoiced shadows behind his eyes, and refused without giving a reason, and Shizuo hadn’t asked for one. It makes no real difference to him, after all, and even if he half-suspects Izaya is disagreeing just for the sake of argument he doesn’t want to pick a fight over something so trivial. The idea that he might not want to pick a fight at all is a strange one, odd and uncomfortable in the back of his mind however true he knows it to be, and in the end he goes back to the hotel room that is rapidly taking on all the traits of enough stability to deserve the word _home_ and texts Celty to chat away the drawn-out hours of the evening. By the time he makes it to bed the uncomfortable self-awareness that clung to his thoughts has given way to the easy haze of exhaustion, and when he lies down it only takes a few minutes to drift into a sleep pleasantly free of the nightmares he has become used to. Shizuo wakes before his alarm the next morning, taking the extra minutes to linger long in the shower and work through a cigarette before he leaves his room and heads back out to the streets to face Izaya again.

Izaya’s waiting when he get there. Shizuo can’t make any sense of the other’s arrival pattern; Shizuo himself is showing up a few minutes before their pre-arranged time every day, but Izaya thus far has been late once and so early on two occasions that he gives the impression of having been waiting for an hour or more. Shizuo is half-expecting the other’s cup of coffee to be cooled or half-empty, but it’s still steaming with fresh liquid as he works his way across the room, and then Izaya lifts his head from his phone and sees Shizuo approaching.

“Shizu-chan,” he purrs, leaning back against his chair with every appearance of utter calm. When he crosses his legs he manages to look elegant, regal, a benevolent king receiving a supplicant. Shizuo can feel irritation prickling down his spine, can feel the familiar threat of anger collecting in his veins; but then Izaya lowers his chin, the motion casting his eyes into shadow, and when his smile tugs wider the amusement under it looks like an invitation, like a suggestion for Shizuo to join him in his entertainment instead of a wall to keep the other out. “I’m so glad you deigned to join me this morning.”

Shizuo pauses for a moment, caught off-guard by this unexpectedly gentle mockery. “I said I would,” he says. It sounds flat in his ears, like he’s rejecting the almost-offer of Izaya’s voice, and he frowns, reaching for some kind of appropriately teasing response to offer in exchange. “Have you been waiting here all morning just to say that?”

Izaya’s mouth quirks up on the edge of a smile before he drops his gaze down to the cup in front of him. “Maybe,” he allows, and that’s almost an admission and more than enough to startle a huffed laugh past Shizuo’s lips. Izaya reaches for his cup and brings it to his mouth to take a sip, and Shizuo moves to the other side of the table to draw the chair back and sit down. Izaya glances at the empty space in front of him as Shizuo settles himself in place before looking back to the cup in his hands as he carefully sets it against the table. “Aren’t you going to get something to drink?”

Shizuo glances back at the front counter. He had walked right past it without even thinking, his attention caught by Izaya in his apparently preferred seat against the window. “Oh.” He pushes back from the table again, frowning frustration at the necessary backtracking of his motion. “I’ll be right back.”

It takes a few minutes, first to wait through the short line and then to loiter while he waits for his drink, in a ceramic cup this time instead of the paper one he usually gets. Shizuo appreciates the weight of it in his hold, presses both hands against the curve of the cup as he finds his way back to where Izaya is still gazing into his own drink, staring at the dark of the coffee inside like he’s seeing something of real interest in the liquid.

“It’s just hot chocolate, right?” he asks without looking up. There’s no audible edge on his voice, no suggestion of mockery that Shizuo can hear; it’s almost more alarming to hear him sound neutral than something more aggressive would be.

Shizuo blinks at the dark of Izaya’s hair. “Yeah,” he says, a little uncertainly, and then, as he tries to reach for traction on the conversation: “I’m still supporting the business, it doesn’t matter whether I’m buying coffee or something else.”

Izaya lifts a hand to sweep dismissal through the air. “I don’t care what you drink,” he declares. “I’d hardly expect you to have a taste for anything more complex than sugar and milk anyway.” Shizuo frowns and opens his mouth to protest, but Izaya’s still talking without giving him a chance to snap a rebuttal to the offhand insult. “If I’m going to be waiting for you anyway I can just order for us both and save myself some time.”

Shizuo’s frown evaporates, his mild irritation giving way to the bright weight of surprise instead. It’s not like it’s that big of a gesture, really; even the convenience offered is a matter of a few saved minutes, hardly worth acknowledging at all. But the gesture itself is startling, even after the last several days, even after their conversation yesterday, so strange that the first thing Shizuo can think of is, “You’re not going to tell them to add espresso to it or something, are you?”

Izaya coughs a laugh. He doesn’t lift his head but his grin is still bright enough for Shizuo to see the flash of white teeth even in the shadow of his hair. “Tempting though that idea is, no, I’m not planning some kind of petty sabotage. I have a vested interest in keeping you calm, I hardly want to give you more stimulants than what you’re used to.” When he looks up his mouth is still curving on amusement, his eyes dark with unvoiced laughter as he catches Shizuo’s stare. “I don’t have any ulterior motive besides convenience. Is that really that hard to believe?”

“Yes,” Shizuo says immediately. “That’s the most suspicious thing you’ve said yet.”

Izaya’s huffs a laugh. “Maybe I’m just trying to unsettle you by being nice,” he suggests, lifting his cup to his lips for another careful sip. “Is it working?”

“Shut up,” Shizuo says, but the words lack the sincerity to give them bite, and Izaya’s smile just pulls wider at the corner of his mouth in response. Shizuo can’t fight back the amusement in his throat; it spills into a laugh, the sound easy on his tongue but odd in this context, with Izaya grinning at him from across the narrow distance of a table. It’s not that it feels strange; it’s that for just a moment it _doesn’t_ , like the comfort of the laughter itself is catching Shizuo’s imagination and pulling it sideways to say _this is what it could have been, this is what it would have been like_ , suggesting teasing and laughter instead of the insults and blood that have always formed their relationship.

“It’s good to know I can still get under your skin if I try,” Izaya says airily as Shizuo recovers enough composure to take a careful sip at the edge of his drink. “I was afraid I had lost my touch, but I guess it’s like riding a bike.” He pauses, his gaze going distant for a minute. “Easier, even. I suspect I’d need to be able to walk in order to ride a bike.”

Shizuo coughs into his drink, caught off-guard by Izaya’s casual statement. Izaya’s eyebrows go up, his mouth pulling into another laugh that barely crackles into audibility before he catches it back. Shizuo clears his throat and takes a breath before he tries speaking. “Did you just joke about…”

“I did,” Izaya says. “I’ve had some time to get used to the idea, Shizu-chan, I’m not particularly self-conscious about it. Did I offend your delicate sensibilities?” He’s still smiling; there’s no indication of strain anywhere in his expression, from the curve at his lips to the level focus in his eyes.

“No,” Shizuo says. “You just surprised me.”

“Only just now?” Izaya asks. “I’ll have to step up my game.” He ducks his head and lifts his cup to his lips again; it’s only after he’s taken a slow sip that he resumes speaks, and then without looking up to meet Shizuo’s gaze. “Black coffee,” he says, the words echoing oddly off the inside of the cup. “The lightest roast they have.”

Shizuo blinks. “What?”

“It’s what I’m drinking,” Izaya says, still without looking at him.

“Why--” Shizuo starts, utterly lost to this left-turn subject change. Then his mind catches up with his mouth, and he closes his lips on the unstated second half of his sentence. “Oh.”

Izaya glances up at him. “Keeping up?” he asks, lilting the question into a taunt, but what friction of anger his tone elicits is more than washed out by the prickle of electricity along Shizuo’s spine, something a little bit embarrassment and a little bit happiness and nothing like he ever expected to feel during a conversation with Izaya of all people.

“Yeah,” he says, and ducks his head to his drink again. The hot chocolate tastes good, when he takes the time to pay attention to it; he’s still not sure it matches the flavor of his drink from the other coffee shop, but it’s close enough to merit further testing. “This is good.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Izaya tells him. When Shizuo looks up he’s leaning against the edge of the table with an elbow so he can brace his hand against his chin. “I trust you won’t mind if I pass on personal experience.”

Shizuo huffs a laugh. “No, that’s fine.” There’s movement from behind Izaya, the shift of one of the other customers getting to her feet; Shizuo’s attention slides to follow her, to track the route she navigates through the tables as she taps through something on her phone. She’s not watching where she’s going, her focus is caught by the screen in front of her, and Shizuo can see the approaching collision of her hip with Izaya’s braced-out elbow as she draws closer. She’s frowning at her phone, entirely lost to her surroundings, and as she steps closer Shizuo says “Here” and reaches out to push Izaya’s elbow in and out of range of the girl’s movement. He does it without thinking, the movement entirely reflexive from the meaningless word on his lips to the casual speed with which he reaches for Izaya’s arm, his fingers pressing against the other’s skin before he has the chance to process the weight of his action.

Izaya’s reaction is as immediate as it is violent. He jerks backwards in his chair, jolting his weight back against the seat as he snatches his arm away from Shizuo’s touch so hard his wrist knocks the edge of his coffee cup and spills a wave of liquid up over the side and onto the table. His elbow swings wide, catching hard against the girl’s hip so she stumbles and falls heavily against the empty table next to them, and in her shout of surprise Shizuo thinks no one but him hears the way Izaya’s voice cracks on “ _Don’t_ ,” the rejection of the contact as sudden and abortive as the motion itself. Shizuo freezes, Izaya shoves backwards, and in the brief, brittle stillness that falls over them it’s the girl who moves, who pushes herself back upright off the table to fix Izaya with a glare.

“Excuse _you_ ,” she hisses, her voice so low and vicious it carries the weight of a slap. Izaya doesn’t so much as shift to acknowledge her words, but she’s still staring him down like she’s waiting for a response, like she can’t see the tension in his expression or the clammy pallor of his skin.

“Sorry,” Shizuo says, loudly enough to draw the girl’s attention to him, and looks away from Izaya’s face long enough to catch her gaze. She raises an eyebrow at him, her mouth drawing into the weight of a frown, and Shizuo says, “You alright?” without much sincerity on the question. She must be able to hear that he’s just going through the motions, or maybe it’s the way his gaze flicks unavoidably back to Izaya’s face before she’s answered, because when she huffs a reply it’s to say “No thanks to _you_ ” with anger audible on the words.

“Sorry,” Shizuo says again, but he doesn’t look back up, and the only answer he gets is the girl gusting an exhale and flouncing towards the door of the shop. He’s sure she looks back to glare at them both again at the doorway, but he’s distracted by pushing to his feet so he can get a handful of napkins to soak up the spill of coffee across the table. Izaya keeps his head turned away as Shizuo moves, keeps his grip tight on the arms of his chair as the other cleans up the mess. Shizuo doesn’t look back up until the spill is gone, and then it’s only barely, just enough to see the shadow of Izaya hair and the set line of his mouth in profile.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, the words softer but with significantly more sincerity than the off-hand apology he offered to the girl. “I wasn’t--”

“--Trying to scare me,” Izaya suggests, still with his head turned and his shoulders straining on tension. His cheeks are still utterly white, like the blood has drained out of them completely, but the fact that he’s talking at all seems like a good sign and helps ease some of the stress of panic from Shizuo’s shoulders. “Yeah. I know.” His voice is strained, his breathing coming with audible effort; Shizuo can’t see his eyes at all behind the shadow of his hair falling over his profile. “That helps a lot, Shizu-chan.”

There’s no sincerity in his voice at all.


	15. Homesick

Shizuo leaves the cafe as soon as he finishes his drink. Izaya unfolded from his tension after a few minutes’ time, but it felt like far longer, and even once he turns back his smile is gone, his chin remains angled down, and when he looks at Shizuo it’s with wary uncertainty in his eyes instead of the easy amusement that was there before. It’s stressful to see, the worse for the juxtaposition with how he was moments before, and in the end Shizuo finishes his hot chocolate well before Izaya finishes his coffee and leaves with some flimsy excuse. He’s sure Izaya sees through it, even if the other doesn’t comment, but Shizuo can still see Izaya’s shoulders relax into relief when he gets up to leave, and he doesn’t need to look back to know that the other has slumped back against the support of his chair with Shizuo’s exit. Shizuo hunches his shoulders against the nonexistent wind as he leaves the cafe, deliberately turns the wrong way at the crossroads, and wanders the city for an hour until he’s paced off the worst of the jittery guilt caught into his veins. It had been an accident, he knows, he hadn’t intended to startle Izaya back into that awful bloodless panic; but it was an accident the first time too, when the unthinking spill of his anger had driven Izaya cringing back against the far wall of Shizuo’s hotel room. Shizuo works his fingers against his palms, clenching his hands and easing them in a rhythm that does nothing to undo the knots of logic in his own head, not when he can’t find his way to a solution in himself. Izaya is in pain because of him, is confined to a wheelchair with no hope of recovery without some shift in the status quo; but Shizuo can’t imagine that this is any better, when every time they interact he just learns some new thing he can’t do. He can’t watch his every action at every moment, can’t guard against those possibilities he doesn’t even know about; and surely this isn’t helping Izaya, not when he leaves their every meeting with exhaustion written into the hunch of his shoulders and the tremor of his fingers.

It would be easy to go back. Ikebukuro shines bright in Shizuo’s mind, glowing with all the warmth of comfort familiar streets and friendly faces have to offer. Shizuo’s chest aches with the thought of returning, his body weighting itself down with the burden of homesickness as soon as he considers the possibility. He misses his friends, he misses his job, he misses the tidy space of his apartment and the comfort of truly occupying a location instead of just borrowing it. It’s painful to even consider staying away longer, even if he still has days left of his vacation; for a moment he wants nothing so much as he wants to return to his hotel room to pack his bags, to collect his belongings and himself and turn his back on this foreign city and this tentative relationship and just leave, leave Izaya to his wheelchair and his life and spare them both the agony of further attempts for some futile, unspecified goal. He could go home, and Izaya would stay here, and--

And Izaya would be left here, alone with his memories and his injuries like he has been for the past two years, with the burden of his own mind keeping him in the wheelchair he has become so used to, so _resigned_ to. Shizuo’s mind rebels at this assumption of responsibility -- Izaya isn’t his problem, Izaya’s issues aren’t his to remedy -- but his memory gains traction on a different point, suggests instead Izaya’s voice from their conversation yesterday, _this is an opportunity_ like an offer and _right?_ like a plea, with his eyes dark on something that might be hope, if it only had the chance to take hold. It’s too easy to imagine that flicker fading to darkness, too easy to imagine acceptance taking the place of whatever almost-optimism Izaya has mustered; and it’s not Shizuo’s job to fix him but he’s been carrying his own nightmares for years, now, and he might not _wish_ things were different but he can see, now, how they _might_ be, can see the frail edges of some more peaceful relationship laying itself between them like the spiderweb afterimage of some other universe, some other world where one of the fundamental components that make the both of them who they are has shifted enough to allow for it. He can’t be the one to leave, can’t be the one to wrench those threads loose and trailing and abandon Izaya to whatever makeshift existence he can find.

 _But are you even helping?_ comes the other voice of reason, logic speaking with something akin to Shinra’s brutal pragmatism. _He’s stressed around you, you’re causing him more trauma every time you interact. Is this really better for him?_ Shizuo doesn’t know, doesn’t have the answer to this any more than he has the answer for whether he should stay or go even within the confines of his own mind. His thoughts run in circles, smoothing themselves out of the raw ache of emotion the longer he walks, but calm does nothing to undo the knots of logic that are trapping him in his own indecision and uncertainty, and even by the time he finally returns to his hotel room he’s no closer to an answer. He texts Celty: _I think maybe I should come back_ , sending the message alone without any additional context, but she doesn’t respond immediately, and after a half hour and a cigarette he gives up on waiting and turns on the television in search of something to lose himself in while he waits for his mind to make a decision for him. There’s a marathon of something on, an old drama Shizuo doesn’t know anything about and usually finds more boring than intriguing, but he lets it play and watches the screen with more attention to the inside of his thoughts than to the images and sound from the screen before him.

His phone rings in the middle of the third episode. At first he thinks it’s Celty, is reaching to answer expecting the flash of a text message; but the chime keeps ringing, promising a call instead of a pending text, and Shizuo is just processing that it can’t possibly be Celty when he sees the unnamed number on the screen.

He picks up without hesitating.

“Shizu-chan,” Izaya says without waiting for any kind of a greeting. “How’s your afternoon?” He sounds ordinary, or as ordinary as he ever sounds; the shrill edge of amusement is back in his voice, anyway, and there’s no trace of the flat tension that was there when Shizuo left the cafe.

“Fine,” Shizuo says, and without bothering with equivocation: “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Izaya says, so easily it would be perfectly convincing were it not for how quickly he had his response ready. “I was over it by the time I got home.”

Shizuo huffs against the phone receiver, hears his not-quite-laugh crackle to static. “I don’t believe you.”

“That’s fine,” Izaya says, as lightly as if they’re discussing the weather and not the extent of his own panicked response to Shizuo’s casual touch. “I don’t need your validation on this point, Shizu-chan.” There’s a pause, a breath long enough to serve as a break in the conversation, and then: “Where do you want to meet tomorrow?”

Shizuo can feel his expression fall, can feel his mouth drag itself down into a frown as he reaches to shut off the distraction of the television. With the absence of its sound the room seems strangely quiet, like it’s an audience waiting for the sound of his voice. “Izaya…”

“We could go somewhere new,” Izaya suggests, his voice skipping high in his throat. “There are a few other cafes in town that are worth going to. Or we could get lunch, if you’d rather meet later in the day.”

“It’s not that,” Shizuo says, and his frown is settling into place, now, printing itself at the corners of his mouth and creasing across his forehead. “I think I should go home.”

There’s a breath of a pause, a millisecond of time when even the sound of Izaya’s breathing catches and stills before he recovers enough to say, “Are you still wandering the streets, Shizu-chan? It’s been hours, even you must get tired eventually, right?”

“I should go back to Ikebukuro,” Shizuo says, and Izaya stops talking completely, the lilt of his voice stalling to absolute silence while Shizuo leans forward to push his hand roughly through his hair. “We’re going in circles, this isn’t helping anyone.”

“It is,” Izaya says, the words so quiet Shizuo can barely recognize the sound of the other’s voice.

“It’s _not_ ,” Shizuo says, and then closes his mouth and closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, swallowing back the flare of frustration that swept over him for a moment. It’s harder than he expected, harder when he has the grate of irritation still lacing along his spine; he keeps his eyes shut when he breathes out, speaks into the dark instead of to the bland beige of his hotel room. “It’s not helping.” That sounds calmer, at least a little bit, and he can still hear Izaya’s breathing coming at a relatively even pace, which is a better sign than it could be. “I freak you out every time we’re in the same room together, that _can’t_ be helping you.” He huffs a sighs, feels the strain of possible anger unwind from his spine to leave him sagging into exhaustion instead. “I just want to go _home_ , Izaya-kun.”

“ _So do I_ ,” Izaya says, his voice breaking open on the words, and Shizuo can feel his whole body go chill at the drag of emotion on the sound, on the unexpected agony lacing itself over Izaya’s voice. His eyes open, his breathing rushes out of him all at once, and the sound of his exhale must be audible because Izaya goes so completely silent that for a moment Shizuo thinks he must have hit the mute button on his phone. There’s a pause, long enough for Shizuo’s heart to pound itself into a sudden guilty rush; and then, just as he’s taking a breath to say he doesn’t even know what Izaya speaks again with his voice stripped bare of either emotion or chipper energy either one.

“It’s helping.” It’s a flat statement, so completely absent any intonation it doesn’t sound like Izaya as Shizuo knows him at all. “It is helping.”

“ _How_?” Shizuo asks, and he didn’t mean to argue but this is too much to accept in silence, rationality rebels against the very premise. “How can you being terrified of me hurting you _possibly_ be helping?”

“Because you’re not,” Izaya says, still in that absolutely level tone, and Shizuo falls silent, his brief flare of argumentation fading to still shock again. “You’re not hurting me. You stop as soon as I get tense. You leave when I ask you to. It’s helping.” The breath he takes is very deliberate, so carefully calibrated Shizuo can almost imagine Izaya taking a count on his inhale and exhale to meter it to calm. “Yesterday I slept through the night.”

Shizuo blinks, waits for more elaboration; when none is forthcoming he clears his throat enough to ask, “Is that weird?”

Izaya’s answering laugh is so brittle Shizuo can hear it cracking even as it makes its way down the phone line. “Yes,” he says, and the flat of his voice is gone, replaced with a strange tension that sounds as much like tears as it does laughter. “Yes, it’s very weird.” He takes a breath and shudders through his exhale. “It’s helping.”

Shizuo sighs a breath. “Okay,” he says, feeling like he’s surrendering and not sure yet if it’s the right decision. “Let’s...I don’t know. Let’s go for a walk tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Izaya agrees, so quickly Shizuo feels like he’s trying to confirm their plans before Shizuo changes his mind. “I’ll meet you at your hotel at ten.”

Shizuo frowns. “Ten is--”

“Eleven,” Izaya suggests before Shizuo has even finished forming his protest. “Before lunch.”

Shizuo sighs. “Okay,” he says. “Eleven.”

“Alright,” Izaya says. “Good. I’ll see you then.” And he hangs up fast, before Shizuo has had a chance to more than open his mouth on a farewell. Shizuo pulls the phone away from his ear, stares at the blinking call duration on the screen for a moment; and then it hums in his hand, lighting up with a new message notification before Izaya’s call has faded from the display.

Celty’s reply is simple, a tentative _Really?_ as if she was able to piece out Shizuo’s emotional struggle from the very few words of his last text. It makes Shizuo smile, aches in his chest with a simple affection unfettered by the complexities tangled around everything between he and Izaya; for a moment he just gazes at his phone, feeling the bittersweet tug of homesickness and loneliness in his chest like a physical force urging him back to Ikebukuro. Then he takes a breath, and sighs an exhale, and opens up his reply message.

 _Yeah_ , he types, the words coming far more easily than they did the first time. _But not yet._


	16. Assistance

“Where do you want to go?”

It’s Izaya who asks, offering the question in lieu of a greeting as Shizuo comes out the front door of the hotel to where the other is waiting for him on the curb. Izaya has resumed his comfortable slouch from the day before, the one that Shizuo is rapidly coming to view as a challenge to see how long they can manage to keep it in place; today it’s coupled with a smile that he thinks might be intended as friendly, possibly, if Izaya has even a basic concept of the idea. The edge of the other’s grin undermines any real approachability the expression could offer, but there’s no overt mockery there, which is something of a remarkable occurrence in Shizuo’s experience, so he doesn’t let his voice drag into its usual irritated growl and dips into uncertainty instead as he looks away down the street.

“Dunno,” he admits. “I usually just end up wandering around the streets when I’m out and about.”

“You let your brain take a holiday and follow your feet?” Izaya asks, but when Shizuo looks back to frown at him he’s shrugging himself out of the criticism his words implied. “I suppose you _are_ on vacation. You really do have nothing better to do than wander the city.”

Shizuo rolls his eyes. “As if sitting in coffee shops is any more productive.”

“It is,” Izaya tells him immediately. “You can overhear all kinds of things in an enclosed space like that.” He pushes himself forward, moving past Shizuo to take the lead down the sidewalk; Shizuo turns to follow, matching the length of his stride to the forward motion of Izaya’s wheelchair as they go.

“Still snooping into other people’s business?” Shizuo asks without much of a bite on the words. “I should have guessed.”

“Yes,” Izaya says, glancing up at him with a quirk to his mouth so briefly seen Shizuo can’t even be sure it was the smile it appeared to be. “You found me by asking on a message board, remember? Not everything has changed, Shizu-chan.”

“Huh.” Shizuo looks out at the sidewalk in front of them and reaches for the lightest tone he can. “So are you trying to run this city now too?”

Izaya’s laugh is bright in the warm of the morning air. “I never tried to run Ikebukuro,” he says. The name sounds odd on his tongue, like it’s dipping into a resonance a little lower and a little sweeter than the rest of the sentence. “I just watched.”

“You didn’t,” Shizuo protests. “You were _always_ involved in something or other in the city.”

“I sold information,” Izaya says. “Getting involved in politics is something of an occupational hazard when you’re in my line of work. That doesn’t mean the things that happened were always my _fault_.”

Shizuo huffs. “I can’t believe you’re trying to play innocent.”

“I’m not.” Izaya takes the lead around a corner, turning them left to cross with the flashing green of the walk signal. “You always gave me too much credit for manipulation, Shizu-chan. I wasn’t _innocent_ \--” as he takes the ramp up onto the next sidewalk and turns them to the left, “--but I wasn’t the all-knowing mastermind you seem to have built me up to be in your imagination.”

“You sure acted like you were,” Shizuo tells him as he takes a few long strides to catch back up to Izaya’s motion.

“Of course I did.” Izaya _is_ smiling, Shizuo is sure of it, now; it would be audible under his words alone even if Shizuo couldn’t see the curve of amusement across his lips. “That was part of the fun of it. I didn’t care _what_ happened, as long as people were being people.” He looks up to catch Shizuo’s gaze for a moment before looking away and back to the path in front of them. “I just wanted to appreciate humanity.”

“Is that what you’re doing here too?” Shizuo asks. “Appreciating humanity?”

Izaya shrugs. “Only for now. I don’t know how long I’ll be staying, after all.”

Shizuo frowns. “What do you mean? Don’t you live here?”

Izaya’s laugh is loud again, bright like it’s been startled past his lips. “Of course I don’t,” he says, increasing his speed to catch the next crosswalk and leaving Shizuo to jog a handful of steps to catch him up. “If I lived here do you really think I’d be staying in a hotel room?” He takes another turn, right this time so Shizuo can’t see the expression on his face for a moment; when he speaks his voice is light, his tone flippant and off-hand. “I can’t stay anywhere very long, after all. I tend to wear out my welcome with certain elements of society quite quickly, given the nature of my work. It’s simpler to move on than to try to establish sufficient security measures to keep myself safe for extended stays.”

“You didn’t leave Ikebukuro,” Shizuo points out. “You stayed there for years.”

“Mm,” Izaya hums. “Things were different in Ikebukuro.” He swings his hand sideways to rap his knuckles against the arm of his wheelchair. “I was a bit more mobile then. Possibly you remember?”

Shizuo huffs not-quite-a-laugh. “Yeah.”

“Besides, people knew me in Ikebukuro.” Izaya is slowing his forward motion, just slightly; the easier pace lets Shizuo fall back into step alongside him instead of hurrying to keep up with his shoulders. “I had an established network. No one was willing to disrupt the status quo by getting rid of me.” He ducks his head, huffs a laugh. “Except for you, I suppose.”

Shizuo doesn’t have a reply for that. He’s felt it too, since Izaya left: the odd absence in the city, like a gap that shifts and changes but that is never gone, never quite filled no matter who makes the attempt. Yahiro’s friend Kuon is trying, Shizuo knows that much; but for all his schemes he’s still a kid, his presence lacking the odd excess weight that Izaya’s has always had, even that first day of high school when Shizuo met him officially. Even in this strange city, in an unfamiliar wheelchair and with unfamiliar reactions, Izaya’s presence is easing a little of the ache of homesickness in Shizuo’s chest, as if he carries some fragment of Ikebukuro in his own being even after the years of his absence. Shizuo wonders if Izaya feels it too, if he compares every new city to Ikebukuro first, if it’s Ikebukuro he thinks of when he thinks of _home_.

Shizuo’s not paying attention to where they’re going, is too lost in his own thoughts to notice what path Izaya is charting for them along the streets and too distracted to question when the other takes a turn. It’s not until he takes a step and finds himself in the lead that he startles out of his introspection, and even then it takes him a moment to blink himself back into present and look back to see what has stalled Izaya’s forward movement.

The last turn they made is too sharp. The sidewalks are narrower in this part of the city; it’s only a difference of a few inches, so little Shizuo barely noticed, but combined with a sign set up at the very corner of a building Izaya doesn’t have enough space to swing his wheelchair wide and stay on the sidewalk. He’s trying to manage it now, Shizuo can see, but it’s a tight enough fit that he’s struggling to complete the turn, has had to back up twice already and still isn’t going to make it on this attempt. He’ll clear it eventually, but it’ll take three or four more tries, Shizuo thinks, and he can see an easy solution to the problem right now. He takes a step forward, reaching out over the gap between himself and Izaya; and stalls himself in place, the memory from the cafe yesterday catching his motion before he can complete it. Izaya’s frowning at the caught wheel of his chair and hasn’t looked up to see Shizuo standing in front of him; Shizuo draws his hand back to his side and clears his throat without coming any closer.

“Want some help?” he asks, his voice going weird and rough on the uncertainty in his throat.

Izaya looks up at him, his eyes flickering wider for just a moment. When they catch the light they look almost red as they pick up shades of crimson from the light around them; Shizuo is more distracted by that than by the shocked-soft part of Izaya’s lips as he processes Shizuo’s words. Izaya blinks away, looking down at Shizuo’s hands at his sides, at his stance some feet away on the sidewalk; there’s a long pause, a moment of hesitation with Izaya’s hands still against the controls of his wheelchair and his shoulders hunched in over himself. The silence drags so long Shizuo wonders if Izaya is going to answer at all; but then he relaxes all at once, letting his shoulders slump back against the support of the chair and his hands go slack at the controls, and Shizuo knows what he’s going to say even before Izaya says, “Sure” with as much off-hand carelessness as if he really doesn’t care about the result. He doesn’t watch Shizuo come closer, doesn’t say anything when Shizuo sets his hands against the handles at the back of the chair; if it weren’t for the way his grip braces tight against the frame as Shizuo starts to pull him back from the edge, Shizuo would think he didn’t notice or care at all. It’s an easy maneuver to bring the chair out wide around the edge of the sidewalk when Shizuo can keep the balance over the inside wheel; it barely takes a handful of seconds, and Shizuo draws back and away as soon as Izaya is past the corner and balanced again.

“There,” he says, taking a step back so he’s out of range of contact again. “You’re good to go.”

Izaya eases his grip on the arm of his chair and reaches for the controls again; when he steers himself forward it’s slowly enough that Shizuo can catch him up in a few strides. They continue in quiet for the length of another half-block; then Izaya says “Thanks,” without looking up to meet Shizuo’s gaze.

Shizuo clears his throat again. “Yeah,” he says. “You’re welcome.”

He’s not sure if Izaya is thanking him for the help or for asking first, but he doesn’t think it really makes much of a difference.


	17. Progression

“I still can’t believe you’re comfortable like this,” Izaya says from the position he has taken up at the far side of Shizuo’s hotel room, as close to the window overlooking the street below as he can get. “There’s hardly enough space to turn around.”

“It’s plenty for me,” Shizuo replies without looking up from the hot water he’s pouring into the teapot the front desk provided at Izaya’s purring request. “Maybe it’s not for _you_.”

There’s a pause, the silence broken only by the faint splash of the water against the sides of the pot. Then: “Did you just _tease_ me?” with so much laughter under the words that Shizuo looks up from what he’s doing to see the way Izaya is grinning at him from the window. The afternoon sunlight is spilling between the gap of the hotel and the building next to it to glow backlit warmth against Izaya’s hair; the illumination brings out shades of brown in the strands that Shizuo has never seen before and lights up the sharp angles of the other’s expression into something almost soft for just a moment. It does something strange in Shizuo’s chest, tenses around his heart like nostalgia for something they’ve never had, and he looks away again before Izaya does, returning his attention to the teapot as the hot water approaches the top edge of the ceramic.

“Is that something else I’m not allowed to do?” he asks without looking up or stopping to strip the faint edge off his words. He grimaces at how sharp they sound -- they pick up more aggression in his throat than he intends -- but Izaya just laughs from the other side of the room, sounding as delighted by this show of irritation as if it were a compliment.

“On the contrary.” Shizuo sets the container of hot water aside on the narrow hotel room counter and looks back up to meet Izaya’s gaze; Izaya’s still smiling at him, this time with his elbow braced at the arm of his chair and his hand steadying against his chin. His legs are crossed as usual, his shoulders tilted into that careless slouch he so likes to adopt; Shizuo’s never known someone else who could make sitting still look so much like a taunt in and of itself. “Your attempts at banter are more entertaining than threatening.” Izaya’s grin pulls wider at the expression Shizuo makes in response to this, his entire face giving way to a shudder of amusement as he ducks his head to the reaction.

“I hate you,” Shizuo tells him without moving from his stance over the teapot on the counter. “I hated you in high school and I hated you in Ikebukuro and I still hate you now.”

“But now you’re using your words to tell me instead of your fists,” Izaya tells him. “You’ve matured so much, Shizu-chan, I’m proud of you.”

Shizuo rolls his eyes and looks down at the teapot instead of trying to hold to his temper while simultaneously facing down Izaya’s smirk. “Sometimes I wish I hadn’t seen you here at all.”

He means it to be flippant. It’s just something to say, words to offer in lieu of the punches he once would have thrown in an attempt to convey his unbearable frustration. But Izaya goes quiet instead of laughing back a response, and when Shizuo looks up the other’s not looking at him anymore at all, has his head turned to gaze out the window so Shizuo can’t see his face. Shizuo’s spine prickles with a familiar chill of almost-guilt, his skin protesting discomfort at the sensation, and he looks back down at the teapot to frown against the rising steam.

“Sorry,” he says. It’s strange to think apologizing felt odd that first time; it’s Shizuo’s most commonly used phrase, now, the words falling so easily from his lips he would barely think about them at all were it not for the weight of guilt that always comes with them. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“It’s okay,” Izaya says without turning around. For once his voice matches the words, even if he sounds a little quieter and more thoughtful that Shizuo is used to hearing him; at least there’s none of that tight-wound tension Shizuo has come to dread or the quaver of sincere emotion that he thinks he’ll never get used to hearing. “I think the same thing sometimes.”

Shizuo stares across the width of the hotel room, over the distance of the open floor and the angle of the couch forming a makeshift wall between them. Izaya’s leaning away from him, bracing his arm on the far side of his wheelchair; it’s strange to watch him without being seen, without having Shizuo’s own consideration itself observed. Shizuo wonders if this is what it’s like to be Izaya, to have all the knowledge observation can grant without his own presence ever being noticed at all. It’s a lonelier feeling than he expected.

“A lot?” Shizuo asks without looking away from the angle of Izaya’s shoulders under the dark of his shirt, without pulling his attention safely back to the curve of the teapot in front of him. Izaya stirs, shifting in his chair as he straightens against the support and looks back to see Shizuo watching him. For a moment his expression is so entirely neutral that Shizuo can see the soft of his mouth separate from the usual tension of a smile or a frown, can see the shift of his lashes as he blinks himself back into focus.

“Not always,” he says, still with that blank expression, like he’s so caught in the thoughts in his own head that he can’t spare the attention to pull up the cover of a smirk or a laugh. It makes Shizuo’s spine prickle, like he’s seeing something oddly private that he isn’t sure he was meant to, and then Izaya looks away instead of slipping back into his usual expression, deliberately turning his shoulders to give Shizuo the wall of his back instead of the non-expression of his face.

“You should come over to my room tomorrow,” he says to the window and without any particular inflection on his voice. “If we’re going to be spending any time indoors it’ll be far more comfortable than trying to fit two people into this one.”

“The room’s not _that_ small,” Shizuo says, but he’s not really thinking about what he’s saying by way of response; his attention is caught by Izaya’s offer, he’s backtracking through his memories to revisit the spectacular failure of his first visit to the other’s room. The image is still perfectly vivid, as clear as if it’s laid over this moment like a second existence: _don’t_ raw and dragging on Izaya’s voice, the hunch of his shoulders and broken note in his throat as he choked out _please leave_ as if Shizuo’s very presence was too much to bear. It’s hard to reconcile that with this moment, with the space between them a coincidence and not a necessity, with the easy comfort of tea steeping on the counter and Izaya’s attention wandering the streets below instead of locked onto Shizuo’s every move like he’s some kind of unpredictable predator. Except his shoulders are tense, now that Shizuo looks for it, his weight is tipped forward against the support of his arm, and suddenly he doesn’t look so calm after all, the illusion of his relaxation evaporating as soon as Shizuo really looks at it to give way to all the tells of stress hidden under an extremely thin facade of ease. Shizuo keeps watching that tension as he pieces together words for a real response, as he tries to navigate the minefield of the space between them as tentatively as he can.

“Will you be okay with that?” he asks, watching Izaya’s shoulders stiffen at the sound of his voice. “I thought you said it was easier when we’re somewhere else.”

“I did say that,” Izaya says without turning around. “It’s even true.” He takes a breath that Shizuo can hear tremble in his throat as clearly as he can see it shift across the other’s shoulders. “That’s why I’m inviting you over.” He shifts in his chair, turning around halfway to look back at Shizuo over his shoulder; their eyes meet for just a moment before Izaya looks away again, ducking his head over his hands in his lap instead.

Shizuo sighs. “Okay,” he says, and looks away as Izaya looks back up, turning his attention to the teapot for the first moment of the other’s unstudied reaction. “Your place tomorrow it is.” He draws the tea out of the pot and sets it aside while he fits the lid back over the ceramic; it’s only once that’s done that he looks back up.

Izaya’s still watching him. His expression is oddly blank, like his facade has been stripped completely bare to leave just the dark attention behind his eyes and set at his mouth; even when Shizuo catches his gaze he doesn’t react for a moment, just stares at the other like he doesn’t recognize him, or like there’s something else running through his mind that’s demanding all his attention. But then he takes a breath, and sighs an exhale, and his mouth turns up into a lopsided smile as his shoulders ease a little from their tight-wound stress.

“Isn’t the tea done?” he asks, and then he’s looking away again, slouching back into that lean against the arm of his chair. “It’s not _that_ complicated of a process, is it, Shizu-chan?”

Shizuo doesn’t bother voicing protest to this. It’s a subject change more than an insult anyway, and he cares more about the way his agreement undid some of the knot of tension along the line of Izaya’s shoulders.

He’s starting to recognize sincerity in the other when he sees it.


	18. Switch

Izaya’s room number is different.

Shizuo thought that it was, when Izaya sent him the text late last night with just the name of the hotel and the room number and nothing else; but it’s close enough that he wasn’t sure, thought maybe he had mixed up two of the digits in his head, and didn’t think anything else of it before falling into bed and into the dreamless sleep that is becoming a pleasantly common occurrence. He forgets all about it until he’s back at the hotel and working his way down the hallway towards the same room he went to the first time; and then he sees the number on the door he remembers, and realizes it’s different than the one Izaya sent him, and has to go backtracking down the hall to find the correct room. He’s frowning by the time he finds it, put off-balance by this inexplicable change and uncertain if he’s the victim of some convoluted joke; but when he knocks uncertainly it’s Izaya who answers immediately, “Come in, Shizu-chan” loud enough for Shizuo to hear it clearly even on the other side of the heavy door.

Izaya’s waiting when Shizuo pushes the unlocked door open. He’s on the far side of the room, lined up just alongside the window in the space, and he’s watching Shizuo as the other steps into the room, his eyes fixed on him with that same wary intensity that Shizuo remembers from their first conversation at the coffee shop. Shizuo stops just inside the doorway, barely far enough inside so the door can swing shut behind him; it falls closed with a _bang_ but Izaya’s focus doesn’t so much as waver to track it. He just stares at Shizuo, his shoulders straight and pressed against the back of his chair and his hands clasped in his lap, his fingers interlaced with each other like he’s trying to press them to stillness.

Shizuo doesn’t know what to say. He had considered different scenarios on the walk over here, and while this isn’t quite the absolute worst situation he pictured it’s a far cry from the best. He was ready to be calm, to hold to his temper with both hands regardless of what Izaya did or didn’t do; but the room change is confusing him, has put him off-balance before he even came through the door, and that discomfort is still clinging to his thoughts in spite of his best attempt to let it go. Finally he clears his throat against the silence Izaya is leaving for him, glances around the very-definitely-different space around them, and asks “Why are you staying in a different room?” in the absence of anything more constructive.

Izaya’s shoulders shift, the flat line of his mouth cracking into a startled laugh that is gone as quickly as it comes. “Ah. You noticed.”

Shizuo frowns. “Of course I noticed. It’s a different _room_. Is one not enough for you or something?”

“No,” Izaya says, still without looking away from Shizuo’s face. His fingers tighten against each other for a moment before they relax. “I asked to switch rooms after you showed up the first time.”

Shizuo glances at the span of the room, the walls closer than they were in Izaya’s first, the window overlooking an alley instead of the main street. “What was wrong with the other?”

Izaya’s jaw tenses for just a moment. “You knew where it was.”

“What do you--” Shizuo starts, and then stops, his words dying to silence in his throat as he catches up to the meaning behind Izaya’s statement. Izaya’s still staring at him, focused on whatever emotion is flickering across Shizuo’s face; it feels like being in a spotlight, to have someone gazing at him so intently regardless of his reaction.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Izaya tells him, the words oddly level for how tense his shoulders still are. “The nightmares are bad enough usually, but I couldn’t even get to sleep the night after. I kept thinking I heard you coming back.”

Shizuo flinches like Izaya’s words are a blow. “I’m not…” He shakes his head, trying to push aside the weight of this particular confession from his mind. “I wasn’t going to hurt you. I told you that.”

“Yes, well.” Izaya’s hands tighten against each other again, his fingers digging in hard against the back of his hands. “It seems I’m not very good at rationality when it comes to you, Shizu-chan.”

Shizuo swallows, tries to find some kind of words to offer in response. What he has seems pointlessly weak, so useless as to be worse than nothing, but he offers it anyway for lack of anything better. “I’m sorry.”

Izaya shrugs, the movement harsh and jerky on the tension holding him braced stiff against the chair. “I’m the one who gave you my address without bothering to ask who you were.” He ducks his head, his mouth drags on a smile. It’s the first time he’s looked away since Shizuo came into the room. “It never occurred to me that _you_ would come looking for me.”

Shizuo wants to protest: _I wasn’t, I didn’t, it was coincidence I saw you, anyone else would have done the same_. He doesn’t. It doesn’t make a difference, he thinks; in the end it was him, and he did see Izaya, and now they’re both here, even if the space between them is fraught with more tension than he can remember since the first time Izaya came to his hotel room.

Izaya clears his throat loudly enough that it pulls Shizuo’s attention back up to his face. He’s looking at his hands instead of at Shizuo; as Shizuo watches he loosens his grip enough to draw his fingers away from each other. “Are you planning to just stand in the doorway the whole time?” he asks, only tipping his head to glance at Shizuo as the last of the words fall between them.

Shizuo can recognize the permission under the words, even if it’s half-disguised by the bite of aggression laid over it. He toes his shoes off by the door before coming forward slowly, feeling a little like every step might lead to an explosion; but Izaya doesn’t look back at him, in fact reaches for the wheels of his chair so he can roll himself away from the window and around the edge of the couch instead of maintaining his position. Shizuo heads for the other end of the furniture, keeping as much distance as he reasonably can, but when Izaya glances up at him he looks unfazed by the other’s proximity, or at least no more alarmed by it than he was when Shizuo came in, which is at least better than it could be.

Shizuo feels better once he’s sitting. It might just be the relative comfort of having something to lean against to take the tension of his shoulders; it might be that Izaya himself eases a little against his chair, looks less like he’s certain Shizuo’s going to lunge at him without warning. It’s frustrating to have Izaya’s eyes so sharp on him, as if Shizuo is some barely-tamed animal ready to fall back to feral instincts at a moment’s notice; it’s easier by far to remove the stress of that half-panicked stare than to try to fight back the grating anger in Shizuo’s veins that growls about proving Izaya right, if he’s so determined to look at Shizuo with all the insult of _monster_ in his eyes if not on his tongue.

“Sorry,” Shizuo says finally, looking down at his hands instead of watching the way Izaya’s hair is falling over his face to hide his features. “I didn’t realize you had to change rooms because of me.”

Izaya makes a sound, a noise of not-quite-protest in the back of his throat. It’s enough to pull Shizuo’s attention up to him, but Izaya’s not meeting his gaze; he’s grimacing down at his hands instead, looking something between pained and frustrated.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he says, not sounding completely convinced. “It’s as much because of me as because of you. It’s not like you _made_ me react like that.”

Shizuo can feel the guilt at the top of his spine dig itself into place, sinking claws into his mind until his frown is more from some misplaced possessiveness over the feeling than for Izaya himself. “I did,” he says, a little more roughly than he intends, and Izaya’s head comes up so he’s meeting Shizuo’s gaze. Shizuo doesn’t look away, doesn’t try to ease the frown from his mouth or the crease from his forehead; there’s only so much he can do to mediate the frustration in his veins, and this is more for himself than it is for Izaya. “It’s because I--” He stalls for a moment, remembers Izaya’s casual statement in the coffeeshop, grits his teeth and pushes himself forward: “--Almost killed you. If I hadn’t you wouldn’t be reacting like this in the first place.”

“Do you want to accept blame that badly?” Izaya asks. “I taunted you into that fight. I _wanted_ you to kill me. Do you not remember that part of it or are you just ignoring that detail?” He braces his hands against the arms of his chair, shifts his legs to uncross them from the angle he’s had them in since Shizuo came in the door. “We can work our way backwards all the way to the first day of high school if you really want to figure out who has more blame to carry. Personally, I’m convinced it’s me, and I’d rather not rehash every detail to prove myself right.”

Shizuo can feel the corner of his mouth twitch on amusement before he can stop the motion. “I’d think you’d like the validation.”

“Mm,” Izaya hums. “Not this time.” He attempts a smile; it’s weak and doesn’t make it all the way to his eyes before it collapses under its own weight, but it’s the best he’s managed since Shizuo came in the room. “Don’t get used to it, Shizu-chan.” He crosses his legs again, inverting the position he was in before; Shizuo can see a grimace flicker across his face in the moment before he ducks his head to hide his expression behind his hair, can feel the sudden sharp edge of guilt rush through him at the sight.

“Sorry,” he blurts, frustration giving way entirely to the uncomfortable itch of guilt. “I should go.”

Izaya’s head comes up, his hands still bracing against the arms of his chair and his expression going blank with shock. “What?” His fingers tighten for a moment, his forehead creases. “Why?”

“I’m making you feel worse,” Shizuo says. “This can’t possibly be helping.”

Izaya’s mouth pulls down around the curve of a frown. “Thanks so much for putting words in my mouth,” he snaps. “I’m sure I wouldn’t have the least idea of how _I’m_ feeling if you weren’t here to tell me.” Shizuo huffs frustration, opening his mouth to apologize for that too, but Izaya waves a hand to hold him silent. “You’re not making me feel worse. This is helping.” His mouth shifts, the corners of his eyes tensing on confusion; he doesn’t really look angry at all as much as perplexed, like Shizuo is some kind of puzzle whose pattern he can’t make out. “What gave you the idea it’s not?”

“You made a face,” Shizuo tells him, trying and mostly succeeding at keeping the growl out of his voice. “Just now, like you were in pain.”

“What--” Izaya starts, then stops as his face clears into understanding before he huffs frustration. “You _would_ pick right now to become observant, wouldn’t you?”

“The last time I wasn’t paying attention you had a breakdown in my hotel room,” Shizuo snaps back at him. “I’d rather not repeat the experience.”

“At least we can agree on that.” Izaya falls back against the seat of his wheelchair, his shoulders slumping into resigned calm like he hasn’t shown since Shizuo came in the door. “It’s just my legs hurting, it’s nothing you did.”

“Oh.” Shizuo’s gaze drops to Izaya’s legs, his attention catching at the easy angle they make against each other. He would never guess they hurt from how comfortable Izaya makes the position look. “Do they all the time?”

Izaya huffs a sound that’s very nearly laughter in the back of his throat. “Well, it hurts to cross them, so yes, most of the time.”

Shizuo looks up. Izaya’s watching him with his head braced against his hand and amusement at the corner of his mouth; there’s no trace now of the pain that was there before, no suggestion of sincere discomfort behind his eyes. Shizuo frowns. “It hurts to cross your legs?”

Izaya raises an eyebrow. “That’s what I just said, isn’t it?”

“But you do that all the time.” Shizuo shakes his head, trying to gain traction against the juxtaposition of these two ideas. “Why do you do it if it hurts?”

Izaya’s smile flickers, tensing at the corners of his eyes for just a moment like he’s flinching at something in his own head. His gaze slides away, landing somewhere against the back of the couch instead of meeting Shizuo’s; Shizuo keeps watching him as his mouth twists on unvoiced words, as he swallows himself into a grin that’s too sharp to do anything but cut. “You really don’t understand me at all, do you, Shizu-chan?”

It’s not an insult. It would be, if it were delivered with Izaya’s usual barely-restrained laugh, if Izaya let it free to grate over the back of his throat or looked up to offer a shadowy stare to go along with the words. But his smile isn’t aimed at Shizuo, and his eyes are dark on something that has nothing to do with amusement, and when his voice wraps around the words it’s almost soft, dipping down into such a low range that the rhetorical question comes out sounding very nearly tender on his lips. Shizuo’s spine prickles, his skin chilling with a shiver whose cause he can’t place, and when Izaya shifts he’s as grateful for the distraction of motion to watch as he is to see the other uncross his legs and set his feet flat against the support of the chair.

He can’t tell if Izaya’s statement is more a warning or an invitation anymore than he can decide which he hopes it is.


	19. Contact

“How much of it do you remember?”

Izaya offers the question across the span of their usual table at the coffeeshop the next morning without looking up from his drink, his tone and expression offering no traction for Shizuo to grasp as far as the subject of the question. He has his head bowed, his elbows braced at the table and his shoulders tipped far enough forward that his hair is falling in front of the sharp lines of his face; Shizuo can’t see Izaya’s eyes at all, can’t make out any of his expression except for the flat line of his mouth as he brings his cup to his lips. It’s frustrating to have no traction for his own comprehension, but if Izaya’s not watching him Shizuo feels free to scowl as much as he likes as he sets his own cup down and leans back against his chair. “Remember of what?”

Izaya glances up, a quick cut of dark eyes before he turns his attention back to the steaming liquid in the cup in front of him. “Our fight.”

They’ve had dozens, so many that Shizuo long ago lost count even in his own memory of the distinctions between them; but he knows without asking which one Izaya means, the only one Shizuo ever takes any time to think about anymore. He sucks in a startled breath and glances around the shop -- it’s the smaller one, the one more likely to be all but empty instead of crowded with patrons -- before he braces an arm across the table and leans in over it. “Do you really want to talk about this here?”

“I asked, didn’t I?” Izaya’s mouth tugs at a smile as his fingers tense and work against the sides of his cup, but he doesn’t lift his head. “Would you rather we schedule a time and place for the conversation so you can prepare a presentation?”

“Shut up,” Shizuo says, and Izaya cracks into a laugh for a moment, a flash of bright teeth before he ducks in close over his cup for another sip of coffee. “You know what I mean.”

“Yes, you’ve been _so_ clear at explaining it,” Izaya says, but he lifts a hand from his cup as Shizuo opens his mouth to protest and waves to forestall the other’s words to silence. “I know, Shizu-chan, unfortunately I’ve become alarmingly skilled at deciphering your attempts at speech into intelligibility.” He leans back in his chair without lifting his gaze, keeping his attention focused on his cup as he works the handle under his fingers. “It’s hard enough having you in my room at all, much less talking over this. And I’d rather not have a repetition of my first visit to _your_ room, honestly. The other coffeeshop is too crowded--” he grimaces at his cup, “--as we found out last time. So. It’s here or nowhere.” His gaze flickers up from his drink at last, his eyes catching at Shizuo’s for a moment. “Talk.”

Shizuo holds Izaya’s stare, keeps looking back at him as he processes the other’s words. “We could talk over the phone.”

Izaya’s mouth twists up again, cutting the shape of a smile that almost reaches his eyes before it flickers out of existence. “It’s harder to follow what you’re saying when you’re just speaking. You’re all but incoherent without the body language you rely on so heavily, Shizu-chan.”

Shizuo sighs, tipping his head back so he can press a hand over his eyes for a moment. “We don’t have to talk about this,” he says to the dark of his shut eyes. “I don’t _want_ to talk about this.”

“Mm.” When Shizuo lifts his hand and tips his head down Izaya is looking into his cup again instead of watching Shizuo’s face. “I’m not looking forward to it, definitely. But you want to go home, right?” He almost makes it past the word _home_ without incident; if Shizuo weren’t listening for it he wouldn’t hear the way Izaya’s voice wobbles over the noun before steadying back to calm. “I don’t think we can resolve anything if we don’t face what happened.”

“Me almost killing you?”

Izaya’s mouth quirks. “Me doing everything in my power to convince you to kill me.”

Shizuo raises an eyebrow, although his expression goes unnoticed. “Don’t make it sound like you were controlling me.”

“Obviously I wasn’t,” Izaya tells him. “If I had been I would be dead right now and you would be the monster I always called you.”

Shizuo’s skin prickles with discomfort. “You sound like you wish that _had_ happened.”

Izaya’s shoulder drags up into a half-formed shrug. “Well.” He brings his cup to his mouth, takes a long swallow of his coffee. “I can’t admit this current state of affairs is enormously pleasant.”

Shizuo can feel his lips weighting into a frown, can feel his forehead creasing between his eyebrows. “Are you saying you wish you had died instead?”

Izaya grimaces into his cup. “No,” he says, but he sounds less absolutely sure than Shizuo could wish. When he looks up his eyes look almost black in the shadow of his hair, like all their color has been sapped by the angle of his chin and the dimness of the light. “Sometimes I wish I had been right about you, though.”

Shizuo stares at him for a moment. Izaya doesn’t look away, doesn’t lift his chin to cast better light onto his features; he stays where he is, with his shoulders hunched in around his hands and the unreadable dark of his gaze fixed steadily on Shizuo’s face. Shizuo’s thoughts are a tangle, looping over and around themselves like they’re trying to gain traction by overlapping threadbare lines of logic, until when he opens his mouth to say “I had nightmares for months” he is as startled as the barely-perceptible shift of Izaya’s eyelashes say the other is.

“I asked you about the fight,” Izaya says, but he’s not ducking his head, and his fingertips are tensing against the sides of his cup. “Not about your sleep cycle.”

“I’m answering you,” Shizuo tells the dark behind the other’s eyes. He means for the words to come out with a snap, to catch and dig into aggression in the space over the table; but they just sound heavy, like they’ve picked up weight from somewhere he didn’t expect, and Izaya doesn’t throw a rebuttal back in his face. He just keeps watching Shizuo, his mouth set and his eyes wide and endless, and after a moment Shizuo ducks his head so he can find words from the smooth surface of the table instead of trying to unmoor them from the shadows of Izaya’s stare.

“I couldn’t sleep for the first week,” he says down at the polished surface under the bracing weight of his palm and the angle of Izaya’s wrists next to his cup. “Everything was fine during the day but as soon as I was alone I’d start thinking about it again, and it was worse in the dark or when I shut my eyes.” He reaches for his cup, takes a sip of chocolate-sweet liquid while he tries to find the words for the weight of anxiety that hung over him for the first few days, for the way he started to dread lying down for the fever-warm delirium he’d slide into and not be able to wake from for what felt like hours and was never longer than thirty minutes. “I thought you were dead for a long time and I didn’t want to ask and find out for sure that you were.” He takes a breath, feeling years-old stress knot in his chest before he shudders out an exhale and lets the panic go. “I just kept thinking about the--” He has to shut his eyes for a moment, has to swallow against the chill of familiar horror that runs through him as he thinks about it. “I felt your bones break with that last punch.”

“Yeah,” Izaya says, his voice odd and strained on the word. “I did too.”

Shizuo grimaces at the table. “Sorry,” he says without looking up. “I didn’t--”

“I asked,” Izaya cuts him off. “I wanted to know.” There’s a pause, a beat of silence; when Shizuo glances up Izaya’s looking down at his hands, staring into his drink like it’s the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen. His knuckles are going white around the curve of his cup. “I didn’t know you had nightmares about it.”

“Yeah,” Shizuo says, not able to place the careful weight on Izaya’s voice and not able to see enough of the other’s expression to get a read on it. “Every night for the first few weeks.”

He can see Izaya swallow, can see the way his lips part on the careful exhale he offers to the drink pressed between his palms. “Did yours stop?”

There’s a moment of hesitation as Shizuo processes this question, as his mind catches up to the shiver of understanding that runs down his spine and sinks into ice in the pit of his stomach. It’s only reflex that insists that he answer, that opens his mouth to say “Eventually,” to the dark of Izaya’s bowed head. “I had one last week, but that was the first one in months.”

“Ah,” Izaya says, and he doesn’t volunteer any other information. He doesn’t need to; Shizuo might not know the details, but he can see the strain across Izaya’s shoulders and the angle of his fingers shifting against the sides of the cup between his palms, can hear the absolute silence that speaks more clearly than dozens of words would do. Izaya doesn’t look up to meet Shizuo’s gaze, and he doesn’t lift the cup in his hands to his lips; he just stares down at it, his breathing catching faster in the back of his throat as his hands start to tremble barely perceptibly in spite of the pressure he’s exerting on them. Shizuo can see Izaya’s shoulders hunching farther over the table, can see his head tipping down behind the weight of his hair as his breathing starts to speed into the frantic rate of panic, and Shizuo’s heart is skipping into overdrive, thudding hard against his ribcage like it’s trying to break free entirely before whatever pending explosion is forming in Izaya’s mind completes its slow-motion development. Shizuo can hear Izaya breathing harder, can see the tremor working up his wrists to thrum along the angle of his arms; and then, out of nowhere, his voice offers all by itself: “Can I touch you?”

It’s an entirely unprompted question. Shizuo is startled by the sound of the words himself, but it’s Izaya who jerks like he’s been shocked, whose head comes up to fix Shizuo with a wide-eyed stare. His lips are parted, his breath coming visibly fast in his chest; for a moment he just stares at Shizuo, his eyes so dark and wide Shizuo isn’t sure the other is seeing him at all.

“Just your shoulder,” Shizuo suggests, lifting both hands to offer palm-up as if Izaya might think he has some weapon clutched in his grip, as if they don’t both know perfectly well Shizuo can’t set the danger that comes with his touch aside as easily as he could a weapon. Izaya blinks, his attention dropping to Shizuo’s hand instead of his face, and Shizuo reaches out by an inch, barely crossing the gap between them but with enough movement to make his intent clear. He thinks for a moment Izaya’s going to flinch back, is going to retreat against the back of his chair or hiss an inhale of incoherent panic; but Izaya doesn’t move at all for a moment, just stares at Shizuo’s hand like he’s never seen it before. Shizuo can feel his heart racing in his chest as if he’s broken into a dead sprint, can feel his whole body trembling on the surge of adrenaline that’s taking the place of the blood in his veins; and then Izaya nods, a downward jerk of his chin that happens so quickly Shizuo isn’t sure for a moment he’s even seen it right.

Shizuo hesitates. “Is that…”

“Yes,” Izaya says without lifting his head. He braces an elbow on the table and lifts his hand to his forehead so his wrist is blocking what little Shizuo can see of his face. “You can.”

Shizuo’s heart is still pounding, beating double-time in his chest as if he’s never going to be able to calm it again. But he reaches out anyway, as carefully as he can; by the time his fingers touch Izaya’s shoulders he’s almost steadied them out of the strained hum of tension running all through his limbs. Izaya doesn’t react to the contact at first, either to flinch or to relax; his nonresponse is enough to let Shizuo sigh himself into relief, enough to let him ease his hand to hold as gently against the other’s shoulder as he can. He can feel the shift of bone under skin, the odd shape of fragility under the most careful touch he’s ever used on someone else, and then Izaya exhales, and some miniscule part of the tension along his shoulders eases under the weight of Shizuo’s hand, as if the contact is a removal of a weight instead of the addition of one. He takes a breath, a long one, the sound dragging in the back of his throat, but it comes out with only a faint stutter in the rhythm of his inhales, and Shizuo is sure that a little more of the strain along Izaya’s spine eases with each breath he takes.

It’s an awkward angle to reach Izaya across the table, the more so when Shizuo’s touch is so light that Izaya’s shoulder is taking hardly any of his weight, and it’s minutes before Izaya’s breathing even begins to return to something like its normal rhythm, but Shizuo doesn’t pull away until Izaya does.


	20. Connection

Shizuo doesn’t know what woke him up at first.

For the first moment he doesn’t even realize he’s awake, hasn’t even entirely parsed that he was asleep at all. All he is feeling is panic, the rush of adrenaline in his veins and pounding his heart rapidfire inside his chest, until the motion of the night-dark room around him seems more like a function of gravity gone sideways than a natural result of his jerking movement as he sat up. He’s gasping for air, his skin prickling with the heat of sudden alarm; when he blinks he realizes the room is dark, when he turns his head he sees there’s no one around him, nothing but the absolute stillness of the empty space. His heart is still pounding, his breathing still coming on gasps, and for a moment he wonders if it was a nightmare, if his memory is still catching up on the reason for his lurching jolt into consciousness. Then there’s additional input, something rattling inside his head in a way he can’t parse for a moment, and finally his ears catch up and tell him that his phone is ringing against the table next to the bed.

Shizuo lets out a breath, feeling some of the panicked strain in his body dissipate with this logical cause for his sudden consciousness. His heart is still pounding, his hands still trembling with the aftereffects of his unfettered surge of adrenaline, but he’s calming even as he reaches for his phone, until by the time he closes his fingers around the humming weight of it it’s in no danger of collapsing under a too-rough hold. He doesn’t look at the number, doesn’t hesitate to wonder who’s calling; he just brings the phone to his ear as he taps the _Answer_ button and stifles a yawn against the back of his free hand.

“Yeah?” he asks, sounding more rough than usual but otherwise, he feels, impressively coherent.

There’s a pause, a breath of hesitation on the other end of the line. Then: “Shizu-chan,” carefully, as if Izaya is feeling out the words on his tongue before letting them free into the air. “I...wasn’t sure you would answer.”

“Yeah,” Shizuo says, offering vague agreement to Izaya’s statement without bothering to clarify even in his own head which part he’s concurring with. “You woke me up.”

“Yes.” That’s acknowledgement, not an apology; Izaya’s voice sounds odd, strained in a way Shizuo can’t quite parse against the sleep-hazy slow of his thoughts. “It’s three in the morning.”

“Oh.” Shizuo turns his head, blinks unseeing at the glow of the clock next to his bed. “Yeah.” Another yawn catches him, this one so enormous it cracks his jaw and leaves him speechless for a long moment. “Why are you calling me?”

There’s a catch of breath, a hiss of air so sharply defined Shizuo can hear it clear over the receiver. He blinks into the dark of his room, starting to frown as his thoughts stumble over some suspicion he can’t frame before it’s lost again to the haze in his thoughts. Izaya clears his throat, the sound so forced it undermines all the off-hand casualness he’s aiming for when he says, “Is waking you up in the middle of the night not enough reason?” There’s another odd pause, a gap of time long enough for Izaya to work through a full breath; Shizuo can hear the rhythm stick oddly, can hear the strange stutter on the inhale before Izaya manages, “There’s still some entertainment in inconveniencing you just because I can, and I was awake, so I--”

“Are you crying?” Shizuo asks abruptly, blurting the question as fast as his mind catches hold of identification on the strange hiccuping weight to Izaya’s breathing. He speaks before he can think -- he might not have asked at all, if he had given himself the time to consider it -- but Izaya’s words cut off instantly, his breath hissing into a startled inhale that is as good as a shout for confirmation, and Shizuo’s lingering exhaustion evaporates all at once. “Why are you crying?”

“I’m not crying,” Izaya says, but he’s talking too quickly, now, to allow himself time to catch his breath and smooth his breathing out, and the traces of tears are audible in the hiccuping catch between his words. “You--you’re still half-asleep, Shizu-chan, you should really--”

“You’re crying,” Shizuo says, and Izaya goes quiet again, his half-hearted denials giving way entirely before Shizuo’s certainty. “What’s wrong?” There’s a long pause, a silence so extended Shizuo thinks Izaya is going to hang up on him; but the line stays open, he can still hear the muffled drag of the other’s breathing, and after almost a full minute he asks again, tipping his voice as far from half-asleep roughness and towards gentle consideration as he can. “Izaya. What’s wrong?”

Izaya takes a breath, drawing the inhale so long Shizuo can hear the way it sticks over the emotion in his throat, can hear the way it stutters on his exhale as he sighs into what sounds like resignation even before he puts words to Shizuo’s sudden suspicion and says “I had a dream” with the flat lack of detail that speaks more to the meaning of his statement than a whole paragraph would do.

Shizuo’s skin shivers with a chill of sympathy, with the memory of too many nights turned as good as sleepless from shadowy nightmares, with the recollection of images that clung to the backs of his eyelids and the dark in the room until even turning all the lights in his apartment on and sitting up watching late-night television wasn’t enough to more than push them away to the fringes. When he breathes out it’s hard, a rush of sound that spills off his lips as understanding before he says “Oh,” with enough weight on the word to carry the rest of his intended meaning.

There’s another pause. Izaya’s still breathing hard, his inhales still sticking on the tension of panic in his throat; Shizuo’s whole body is tensing with secondhand stress but he doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know what to offer when the only point of communication they have is the sound of each other’s voice made odd and staticky over the gap of the phone line. He hesitates for a long moment, reaching for and rejecting words as fast as he considers them; finally he falls back to simplicity, asks “Are you alright?” in an effort to gain more of a response even though the sound of Izaya’s uneven breathing answers more clearly than words would.

He gets a laugh by way of a response, a huff of sound as much hysterical as it is true amusement. “Would I have called you if I was alright?” Izaya asks with rhetorical bite on the words, and then, hard on the heels of his own whip-quick irritation, “Sorry,” the apology given grudgingly and with more self-judgment than anything else. “I shouldn’t have. I didn’t mean to wake you up.” He shudders through another exhale; when he speaks again his voice is muffled, like he’s turned away from the phone or has his mouth pressed against his sleeve or the sheets. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“No,” Shizuo says. “No, it’s fine.” He’s surprised by how sincere the words feel on his tongue. He lifts a hand, pushes roughly against his hair to ruffle it back off his forehead while he blinks himself into clarity on the darkness in front of him as if it will somehow help resolve the sound of Izaya’s voice on the other end of the line. “Do you...want to talk about it?”

Another laugh, this one so short and damp it sounds more like a sob than anything else. “Not particularly.”

Shizuo stares into the darkness as he turns over his next words in his head. “Should you?”

There’s a pause, more hesitation than Shizuo expected, like Izaya is actually giving his question some thought, and when he gets an answer it’s “I don’t know,” softly, like Izaya’s whispering it. “I’m not going to.”

Shizuo shifts back over the bed, untangling himself from the sheets enough so he can lean back against the headboard and let the support of it take his weight as he tips his head back against the wall. “Okay.”

Izaya makes a sound into the phone, a faint whine like it’s been startled out of him. “What?”

Shizuo frowns. “What?”

“You’re just going to leave it like that?” Izaya asks. “Not going to try to pry the details out of me or anything?”

Shizuo shrugs, even though Izaya can’t see his reaction. “No. If you don’t want to talk about it I’m not going to make you.”

Izaya goes very quiet for a long moment. “Oh.”

Shizuo can feel a yawn starting in the back of his throat and lifts a hand to cover his mouth as it breaks free to crack along his jaw and strain in his throat. “Do you want me to stay on the phone?”

Izaya crackles through that laugh again. It sounds damp even over the phone line. “Are you seriously offering to keep me company through my midnight panic attack, Shizu-chan? It’s three in the morning, did you miss that part?”

“No,” Shizuo says levelly. “Do you want me to stay?”

There’s complete silence again. Izaya has gone so quiet that for a heartbeat Shizuo thinks he really has hung up, wonders if he didn’t miss the click of the line going dead from the other end. But then there’s an inhale dragging itself into the weight of resolution, and Izaya says “Yes,” with a weird raw edge on the word like it’s being forced out of him.

Shizuo shifts against the wall, working his shoulders into a more comfortable position as he relaxes against the support. “Okay,” he says.

It takes almost an hour for Izaya’s breathing to steady back out of the shivery thrum of panic on the other end of the line, but Shizuo doesn’t hang up the call.


	21. Optimism

Shizuo sleeps in the next morning. Usually he’s awake within the first few hours of daybreak, drawn to consciousness by the sunlight streaming through half-drawn blinds; today he sleeps through dawn, and the first hours of the morning, and has nearly made it entirely to the afternoon by the time hunger stirs him to consciousness and persuades him to fumble his way out of bed and into a shower. He still feels hazy when he’s done, strange and hungover with too much sleep and too late of a start to his day; he can barely remember the end of his conversation with Izaya the night before, has to reach to find the sleep-hazy memory of asking if Izaya’s asleep and the mumbling sound of assent from the other end that persuaded him to finally end the call with almost two hours on the timestamp. He had fallen asleep almost immediately, collapsing to unconsciousness without even plugging his phone back in to charge; by the time he’s out of the shower it’s flashing a complaint at him, blinking red with a low battery warning before he plugs it in to let it regain some of the power he used up on his extended call the night before. He leaves it in his hotel room while he goes out to find breakfast -- or lunch, as the time of day would seem to indicate -- and by the time he’s returned it’s into the early hours of the afternoon, almost a full twelve hours since the sound of his phone ringing startled him awake the night before. Shizuo considers stalling for another hour, considers not calling at all; but they’re only passing thoughts, and in the end he settles at the edge of his bed and calls back the same unnamed number that called him last night, that he can recognize at a glance now as Izaya’s.

Shizuo doesn’t even have a chance to think through what he’s going to say; Izaya picks up halfway through the first ring, as instantly as if he was waiting for the call. “Shizu-chan.” His voice suggests the same as his quick response; he sounds far calmer than he did the night before, as level and steady as if this is a business call and not contact from...whatever it is they have become to each other since Shizuo first glimpsed the familiar dark of a coat through the distraction of a crowd.

“Hey,” Shizuo says. “Morning.”

Izaya snorts a laugh. “I hate to break it to you but we’re well on our way to afternoon, Shizu-chan.”

Shizuo rolls his eyes unseen. “Afternoon,” he amends.

“Afternoon,” Izaya purrs right back at him. He sounds amused, without any cracks of emotion in the resonance of his voice that Shizuo can make out. “Are you only just awake?”

“No, I’ve been up for a while.” Shizuo hesitates for a moment; but there’s no point to his call if he doesn’t ask, after all, and there’s no point in stalling. “Are you okay?”

“What?” Izaya still has the edge of a laugh under his voice, like he’s just waiting for Shizuo to do something worth breaking into audible amusement over. “I’m fine, Shizu-chan. Do you always call your friends in the middle of the day to check on their well-being?”

“That’s not what I mean,” Shizuo tells him. “After last night. Are you alright?”

“Ah.” There’s a moment of hesitation; when Izaya speaks again the laughter is wholly absent from his voice. “I’m fine.” He takes a breath, clears his throat. “I’m used to it by now. It’s not a particularly uncommon occurrence.”

Shizuo’s memory flickers back to the first few weeks after Izaya vanished from Ikebukuro, when he woke sweating under his sheets at least once and sometimes twice a night from dreams of Izaya’s blood on his hands, from half-hallucinations, half-memories of bones shattering under his fingers, of Izaya screaming himself hoarse as he never did in reality. “Every night?”

“Mm.” It’s not a no. Shizuo knows it’s not, even if Izaya’s off-hand tone attempts to make it sound like one. “Often enough.”

Shizuo ducks his head and stares unseeing at his hand open and idle in his lap. “Did last night help?”

“I fell back asleep,” Izaya says, with finality on his voice like this is an answer.

“That’s not always a good thing.”

“I fell back asleep and stayed asleep,” Izaya clarifies. “It helped. Is that enough to make you feel like a good person?”

“Good,” Shizuo says instead of answering the question. “I’m glad.”

Izaya sighs heavily against the receiver of the phone. “I’m happy for you.” There’s a pause, a weight of silence gaining force with the seconds that pass; then Izaya speaks again, more softly than before. “Thank you for answering.”

Shizuo shifts his shoulders uncomfortably. He’s not sure he’ll ever get used to the sound of sincerity in Izaya’s voice. “Sure.”

Izaya clears his throat. “Was there anything else?” He’s making at attempt at a casual tone again; it’s not completely convincing, even over the phone, but Shizuo doesn’t want to try to pick apart the odd resonance of emotion under the brittle facade of the other’s normalcy, so he lets it stand without comment.

“No,” Shizuo says. “That was all.”

“Okay.” Izaya is gaining traction on his act; he sounds almost entirely ordinary, now, is starting to slide into the lilting almost-laugh that always reminds Shizuo of Ikebukuro as it was, back when their fighting was more for the fun of the chase and the rush of adrenaline than with the weight of true intention behind it. “Well. I got a late start today, Shizu-chan, I have a lot of work to catch up on, so if your anxiety has been appeased…?”

“Ah.” Shizuo blinks. “Yeah. Sorry.”

“I can meet with you tomorrow,” Izaya offers, unprompted and as offhand as if he doesn’t really care about Shizuo’s answer, as if he’s only half-listening for the other’s response. “If you’ll still be in town.”

“Yeah,” Shizuo says. “I will. The coffeeshop?”

“I’ll come by your room,” Izaya suggests. “Around ten.”

“Fine. See you tomorrow.” Shizuo pauses, hesitating over whether he needs more of a farewell than that; but it’s Izaya who speaks, who takes a breath and gives voice to the half-formed thought in the back of Shizuo’s head.

“This is weird.” He doesn’t sound amused as much as off-balance, now, his voice soft like he’s whispering again, like he’s worried someone unwanted might overhear his words, like he’s not completely sure he wants Shizuo himself to hear them. “Did you ever think we’d talk like this?”

 _No_ , Shizuo wants to say, the word carried on years of established hatred, carved into his skin with the edge of Izaya’s knife that first day they met and layered deep against his bones with tasers and bullets and always, always the flash of sunlight off a blade, the cut of Izaya’s smile across his face. But the rejection dies unspoken on his tongue, melting away like dew before the dawn, because he _has_ thought about this, he’s spent the last two years framing this conversation and all the others like it in his head over and over again, and just because he thought it was impossible doesn’t mean he hasn’t imagined it into plausibility.

“Yeah,” he says finally. “I did.”

Izaya’s laugh is startling over the line, sharp and loud on surprise. “You’re more of an optimist than I am,” he says, the words oddly soft without the edge of insult Shizuo has come to expect from that voice. “See you tomorrow, Shizu-chan.”

“Yeah,” Shizuo says, and draws his phone away to hang up. It’s not until after he’s ended the call that his thoughts backtrack to Izaya’s first question: _do you always call your friends?_ , not until he’s staring at the flashing numbers of the call duration that he realizes he didn’t reject the title, that _friend_ and _Izaya_ don’t seem as impossible to connect as they once did.

It’s a weird thought, but he’s smiling as he puts his phone away.


	22. Untouched

“We don’t have to walk around,” Shizuo says as the front doors of the hotel open to let he and Izaya move out of the air conditioned cool of the interior and into the warmth of the morning sunlight. “If you want to get coffee we can head to one of the shops instead.”

“I’m the one who suggested meeting here instead of at a coffeeshop,” Izaya points out. When he lifts his head Shizuo can see the sharp edge of his grin from under the shadow of his hair, can see the bright of the sunlight catch flecks of scarlet into his eyes. “Just because I’m in a wheelchair doesn’t make me immobile, you know.”

“That isn’t what I meant,” Shizuo says, but Izaya just laughs, the sound bright enough to tug the weight of a contagious smile against Shizuo’s mouth. “Shut up.”

“And throw us both upon the mercies of your conversational skills?” Izaya asks. “God forbid.”

“I think I liked it better when I didn’t have to listen to you for more than five minutes at a time,” Shizuo says, as if he really means it. “It was a lot less irritating.”

“I liked it better too,” Izaya declares as he ducks his head to watch where he’s going and takes the lead around a corner. “Too bad you lost your temper and ruined that for us both.” Shizuo is knocked silent by this for a moment, his speech stolen by the casual ease of Izaya’s words as his balance wavers and stumbles under him; Izaya pauses a few feet ahead of him, looking back over his shoulder so Shizuo can see the dark of his lashes in profile. His mouth catches on a smile, unvoiced laughter tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I’m teasing you.”

Shizuo huffs out a breath of tension and jogs forward to catch back up to Izaya’s side. “I don’t get it,” he sighs, hunching forward as he shoves his hands into his pockets and ducks his head so his hair falls to cast shadow over his face. “How can you be so calm about it now when--“ He cuts himself off to silence, stalling the rest of the sentence before it finishes, but from the way Izaya glances sideways at him the unvoiced inquiry is clear enough anyway.

“I told you,” he says, looking away and back to the sidewalk. “It depends on the situation. It’s easier if I know it’s coming.”

“I know,” Shizuo growls without more than mild heat on his voice. “ _I_ don’t know when it’s going to be a problem.”

“You’re doing fine,” Izaya tells him without looking up. “Look, we’re having a whole conversation right now without you trying to kill me or me going into a panic.” That last has a bite on it, comes with a cut of a smile that Shizuo can see flash like a blade in the sunlight, but Izaya just keeps pushing himself forward, working the wheels of his chair with that easy familiarity that is becoming more ordinary to Shizuo with every passing day. “Someone who saw us together would think we’re friends, Shizu-chan. Crazy, isn’t it?”

“It’s not that crazy,” Shizuo says. He’s watching the top of Izaya’s head instead of the street in front of them; the dark of the other’s hair gleams in the sunlight, the bright of the illumination casting the shadow of the color the darker by comparison. “We could have been friends before.”

“Your imagination is more active than I gave you credit for,” Izaya says, but he’s not looking up to meet Shizuo’s gaze, and there’s an odd tension on his voice that Shizuo can’t make sense of without the assistance of the other’s expression to get a read on his emotion. “Or have you expanded the definition of friend to include regular death threats as well?”

Shizuo ignores this instead of offering a response. “There’s a new pair of kids in Ikebukuro since you left.”

Izaya makes a sound, the cadence of a laugh but so rough it doesn’t carry any amusement at all. “Only two in all this time? The city must really be losing its charm without me there.”

“Don’t be a brat,” Shizuo tells him. “One of them held his own against me in a fight.”

Izaya doesn’t quite stop his forward movement. His chair continues moving forward under the open curl of his fingers; but there’s a stutter in the rhythm of his motion, the briefest of hesitation as he shifts his hand back to draw his wheels forward by another rotation. Shizuo thinks he might have not seen the pause at all if he hadn’t been looking for it. “Really,” Izaya says, and even the appearance of laughter is gone from his voice now, the lilting taunt of his tone has dropped into the shadows that prickle along Shizuo’s spine with anticipation of conflict, with the expectation of violence even though Izaya isn’t even looking at him, isn’t moving but to propel himself farther forward along the sidewalk. “He sounds interesting.”

“He is,” Shizuo says. “He’s best friends with the other one.”

“Ah,” Izaya says, still with that focused darkness under his voice. “What’s the other one? A vampire? An angel? An Egyptian god to go along with the resident dullahan?”

Shizuo doesn’t look away from the dark of Izaya’s hair. “He says he’s trying to be like you.”

Izaya goes utterly silent. For a moment there’s nothing at all but the sound of his wheelchair rolling over the sidewalk and the thud of Shizuo’s shoes scraping on the pavement.

“I see,” he says, finally, and there’s no emotion in his voice at all anymore.

“They’re friends,” Shizuo says again, even though he’s fairly sure Izaya didn’t miss that detail, even though he suspects Izaya has already leapt ahead to the conclusion that took him some hours to work through after his first encounter with Kuon and Yahiro. “Best friends.”

Izaya lets a breath go. “So you started daydreaming about what could have been?”

Shizuo shifts his shoulders, the shape of a shrug that goes unseen by Izaya’s bowed head. “Yeah,” he says. “I talked to Celty about it. If maybe we couldn’t have gotten along instead of fighting all the time. Maybe it would have been better for the city, you know?” He huffs a laugh made warm on the affection that comes with the memory. “She said that you would have just manipulated me.”

“I would have,” Izaya says, instant agreement coming to his lips while he keeps his head ducked down. “I can’t believe you had to have someone else tell you that.”

“Are you manipulating me now?” Shizuo asks.

Izaya lets himself roll to a stop. Shizuo stills his own pace, drawing to a halt just alongside Izaya’s chair on the sidewalk; between them they take up nearly the whole width of the pavement, but he doesn’t look to see what’s around them. Izaya tips his head up to look at Shizuo, his hair keeping his eyes in shadow even as he stares up to meet the other’s gaze; his mouth is relaxed, his expression so blank Shizuo can’t read anything at all from it. They look at each other for a long moment, the silence between them stretching breathlessly long; and then “No,” Izaya says without looking away, with his face still turned up to catch the light into crimson behind the weight of his lashes. “I’m not.”

Shizuo nods. “That’s what I thought.”

Izaya’s mouth twists, catching onto the start of what Shizuo thinks might be a smile before he’s been able to see it catch and light into the other’s eyes. His attention is wholly fixed on Izaya staring up at him, all his focus dedicated to that one pursuit, so when a man approaches from behind them Shizuo doesn’t see him coming at all, doesn’t process any of the indications of a pedestrian. It’s Izaya who glances over, whose gaze flickers sideways and away from Shizuo’s face, and Shizuo is just starting to turn his head in unthinking imitation when the full forward weight of someone else’s shoulder slams hard against his. There’s a rattle of metal, a cut-off noise of protest from Izaya, and Shizuo catches his balance and looks up just as the man who has just shoved past them turns back to glare over his shoulder.

“Stop taking up the damn sidewalk,” he growls. His tone is enough to stir the beginnings of ire in Shizuo’s chest all on its own, even without the dull ache of impact radiating out from his shoulder, but then the man’s gaze flicks to Izaya, dragging over the other and visibly dismissing all his appearance but for the outline of the wheelchair he’s sitting in. “Just because you can’t walk you think you own the place?”

Shizuo had almost forgotten what anger felt like. Even in Ikebukuro it’s been more and more of a rarity, his temper cooling with age or Izaya’s absence, he doesn’t know which and hasn’t precisely determined the cause. Even over the past few weeks he hasn’t veered into true rage, hasn’t made it past the opening sallies of a crushed coffee cup or a shout on his voice before Izaya’s cringing panic stalled him into the cold horror of almost-guilt radiating through his body like a sudden frost. This is different. This is like a heat wave, like electricity roaring out into his veins from a circuit that has suddenly slammed closed after being left open for weeks in a row. The burn of it forces all the air out of his lungs at once, leaves him tingling through his entire body with sudden adrenaline, and when he says “Hey,” he can feel the weight of the word like a diamond on his tongue, sharp-edged and unbreakable and waiting for the sunlight to facet into beauty. “What’d you say?”

“Stop taking up the sidewalk,” the man says, turning his attention to Shizuo and completely ignoring Izaya alongside him. “Some of us are trying to walk on the street instead of have a conversation.”

“Do you know how dangerous roads are?” Shizuo asks, feeling the words resonate against his chest like the opening chords of a symphony, like his entire body is an orchestra tuning itself into a thrum of sound he can feel in his blood, in his bones, sparking down his fingers and tensing in his wrists. “Sidewalks running alongside roads are some of the most dangerous locations there are.” He takes a step forward, hears the sound of his foot hitting the sidewalk like a gunshot in his ears. The man is eying him consideringly, taking in the angle of Shizuo’s shoulders and the set of his jaw; from the way he’s squaring himself up he’s picking up on the aggression inherent in Shizuo’s movements, if not the true threat they carry. “I could have tripped and fallen in front of a car.” Shizuo jerks his head sideways in Izaya’s direction without turning to look at the other. “ _He_ could have fallen sideways and hit his head against the railing there.”

The man scoffs a laugh. “What are you—“

“You could have killed both of us,” Shizuo talks over him. The fire that has taken control of his voice doesn’t care that the other is trying to ask a question, barely acknowledges his input at all. It’s too busy tensing his legs to brace himself against the sidewalk, too busy curling his fingers into fists at his sides. “If you’re willing to kill other people that means you must be ready to die yourself, right?”

Something in the man’s eyes flickers, some animal instinct in him reacting to the tone in Shizuo’s voice even if the rest of him doesn’t consciously recognize the threat. “Hey man, aren’t you going a little too far?”

“You could have just asked us to move,” Shizuo tells him. When he tenses his fingers his knuckles crack, his nails press hard against his palms. “You’d rather use violence, though, huh?”

“Hey—“

“You know what I hate more than anything?” Shizuo says, and he’s drawing his arm back, feeling the muscles in his shoulder and back flex and strain with the satisfaction of the motion as the stranger’s eyes go wide, as he starts to lift a hand to forestall Shizuo’s movement. “ _Violence_.” And he swings, all the pent-up frustration and building irritation of the last few days sparking and flaring to a single unbroken connection from his spine to his shoulder all the way down to the tense-knotted fingers of his hand. His fist connects, there’s a spray of blood, and the stranger flies backwards over the distance of half a block with a grunt knocked from him that seems to hang in the space he’s just vacated a moment after he exits it. Shizuo huffs an exhale, feels the tension in his body sag into relief so all-encompassing it’s nearly sexual; and it’s in the silence left by the stranger’s absence and his own sigh of finality that he hears the way Izaya’s breathing.

It’s bad right away. Shizuo doesn’t need to turn around to hear the telltake hiss of breath as Izaya gasps for air, doesn’t need to look to hear the arrhythmic desperation under the panting inhales the other is taking. He does anyway, turns on the sidewalk with those same too-heavy footfalls that feel like a bell tolling, now, as if the symphony in his veins has shifted from a triumphal march to the weight of a requiem without giving him enough time to catch his breath.

Izaya is shaking. Shizuo knew that, knew he must be; it’s audible in the frantic sound of his breathing, clear from the hiss of air in his throat. It still hurts to see the way he’s hunching over his white-knuckled grip at the arms of his chair, it’s still painful to see his face gone stark white under the inky fall of his hair. Shizuo curls his fingers the tighter against his palms, feels a surge of frustration spike hot up the whole length of his spine; then he lets his fists go, and lets his shoulders slump, and breathes out “Shit” very softly with his exhale. “Izaya?”

Izaya doesn’t respond. His eyes are open but he doesn’t look like he’s seeing anything at all; he’s panting for breath instead, his shoulders trembling with the force of the effort running through his body until Shizuo isn’t sure he’s hearing anything except his own heartbeat. Shizuo takes a step forward, tentatively, in case Izaya panics; but Izaya doesn’t look at him at all, doesn’t show the least sign of realizing Shizuo’s there any more than the rest of their surroundings.

“Izaya,” Shizuo says again, still as gently as he can, but there’s still no response. It could be worse, he supposes. It could be a lot better. There’s still several feet between them; he doesn’t know what Izaya might do if he looks up to see Shizuo suddenly next to him. “Izaya.”

Still nothing. Shizuo considers the sidewalk – it’s wide enough for two people walking alongside each other, but Izaya’s wheelchair is taking up more than half the space, and even with their most recent passerby dealt with there’s no way to avoid more in the unmeasured span it will take Izaya to calm down. There’s an extra space a few feet down, the inset of a storefront that looks to be closed at the moment; it would be enough to keep Izaya mostly out of the way of foot traffic, if Shizuo could figure out how to get him there.

Shizuo considers the situation for a moment. Izaya is still gasping for air in tiny panicked inhales that can’t be enough to let him really catch his breath, still shaking so hard Shizuo is faintly impressed he’s still managing to stay upright at all. He suspects that has more to do with the intensity of the grip Izaya’s maintaining on the chair than anything else, but that in and of itself is admirable given how badly the rest of him is trembling. It would be easy to draw the wheelchair back to the space, would be the work of a few seconds, not even a full minute of time; but Shizuo doesn’t want to come closer, doesn’t want to move Izaya at all without knowing the other is expecting it. Finally he takes a breath, and lets it out, and when he speaks it’s as slowly and carefully as he can manage.

“I want to move your chair back off the main sidewalk,” he says, keeping his gaze fixed on Izaya’s face for any indication of attention. “So you won’t get pushed again. Can I pull you back by a few feet?”

For a minute Shizuo thinks Izaya hasn’t heard him, thinks Izaya is too lost to the haze of his own thoughts to listen or at least to respond coherently. But then the other sucks in a sharp inhale, harder even than the ragged ones that have gone before, and when he moves this time it’s with enough intention to jerk his chin through a nod of assent. Shizuo lets out a breath of relief, takes a step forward, and Izaya gasps “Don’t touch me,” with the sharp edge of a warning on it enough to stall Shizuo in his tracks.

Shizuo pauses, considers the gap at the side of Izaya’s wheelchair and the distance between the other’s shoulders and the back of his chair; then he takes a breath, and says “Okay” with as much steady certainty as he can put on it as he steps forward and wide to avoid even glancing contact with Izaya’s sleeve.

Shizuo doesn’t touch Izaya at all as he pulls the chair back and into the inset pavement off the main walkway. He keeps his hands on the handles of the chair, and draws back as soon as the motion is complete, and backs away to press his shoulders against the far side of the alcove for good measure while he shifts his weight to settle in and wait for Izaya to collect the fractured pieces of his composure.

It’s going to take a while. He doesn’t have any intention of leaving. As the cause of this current breakdown, he thinks it’s only fair that he see it through to the end.


	23. Burden

Eventually Izaya’s breathing eases. It’s not a pleasant wait; Shizuo doesn’t imagine it would be in any case, regardless of how well he knew the person gasping for air and trembling like they’re about to collapse entirely. But it’s infinitely worse to have it be Izaya, when Shizuo still isn’t sure how to feel about him half the time and is only barely approaching the fragile beginnings of friendship, and it’s worse even than it would be alone because Shizuo can feel every beat of his heart like another surge of guilt through his veins, like his thoughts whispering at him _this is your fault_ , and _you did this_ , layering self-conscious unhappiness over and over on itself until Shizuo isn’t sure he’ll ever be able to strip it from his thoughts. It reminds him of when he was a child, when every swing of his fist was a surrender, was a battle lost in the endless war against himself. He came to terms with that years ago, under the weight of dozens of Saika-possessed forms vying for his attention, vying to express their own affection towards him; but this is as if he’s been thrown back in time, as if all that sour-bitter self-loathing is recasting itself in the sound of Izaya’s choking inhales and the hunch of the shoulders that repulse even the thought of a touch.

Shizuo wonders if it wouldn’t be better if he were someone else, anyone else, someone distant enough from the cause of Izaya’s trauma and the impetus of this particular reaction that he could reach out without fear of startling terror from the other, if he could press the weight of his hand between Izaya’s shoulders to ease him into some kind of steadiness instead of leaving him to find his own way there with nothing but Shizuo’s gaze to hold him to reality. But if Shizuo were someone else this wouldn’t have happened like this, and if he were someone else maybe he wouldn’t have found Izaya in the first place, and maybe it would have been better for them both in the long run but right now he’s all Izaya has, and he can’t even entertain the idea of turning his back and walking away to leave Izaya to find his way home alone. So he stays, and he glares away anyone who looks in danger of trying to start conversation or conflict either one, and after some extended span of time Izaya’s fingers start to ease against the arms of his wheelchair, and his shoulders start to dip forward into exhaustion instead of strain. He’s still panting for air, still shuddering with every inhale like he can’t remember what it is to breathe normally, but it’s enough to undo some of the panicked sympathy in Shizuo’s chest, enough to let him take a calmer breath in time with the steadying rhythm of Izaya’s.

He still doesn’t speak. He isn’t sure what it is he’s planning – to wait until Izaya has collected himself, to speak after the sound of his breathing has eased, maybe just to let Izaya move forward and away without acknowledging him at all, if he’d like – but in the end Izaya has barely found his breath again before he says, “Are you still there?” with his voice raw and ragged as if he’s been screaming for minutes instead of gasping for breath.

Shizuo shifts against the wall at his back. “I’m still here.” It comes out more softly than he intended, his tone falling to a lower range than he expected; but it’s enough for Izaya to hear clearly, he can see acknowledgment write itself into the sudden strain of the other’s shoulders like he’s remembering the flush of panic that gripped him moments ago. Shizuo opens his mouth to apologize, even if he doesn’t know what for; but then Izaya’s spine curves, his body slumps forward into exhaustion again, and Shizuo closes his mouth as Izaya sighs heavily over his knees.

“Okay,” he says, and then, like an afterthought: “Good,” laid over enough tension to make it a lie all by itself. “I need you to take me home.”

Shizuo doesn’t move from the wall. “Are you sure?” he asks, keeping to that initial accidental gentleness since that’s what he started with and it seems best to avoid any startling changes. “I could just—“

“ _Yes_ ,” Izaya snaps, his voice cracking over a sudden surge of emotion as his head turns almost enough for Shizuo to see his eyes, almost enough for him to see Shizuo’s face. “I’m sure.” There’s a beat of silence, a breath of a pause; then Izaya shudders through an exhale, and lifts a hand from the arm of his chair to press his palm hard against his forehead as if it’s too much to even hold his head up of his own volition.

“I don’t know if I can get myself back on my own,” he says against the inside of his wrist, the barrier against his mouth muffling the raw edge on his voice until he just sounds tired, sounds bone-deep exhausted in a way Shizuo can’t remember ever feeling. “If I was sure I could make it I wouldn’t be burdening you with it, Shizu-chan, but getting your help is a lot better than trying to flag down a complete stranger on the street.”

“It’s not a burden,” Shizuo tells the dark of Izaya’s hair. His chest is tense; it’s hard to find his breath, it feels like there’s something pressing hard at the inside of his throat.

“It is,” Izaya says, still without lifting his head from that heavy forward lean. “It doesn’t matter,” and the words are so heavy they expand to encompass everything, from the tremble of his breathing still audible on difficulty in his throat to the angle of his pain-stilled legs to the guilt at Shizuo’s spine and the strain of what he doesn’t want to admit are tears pressing at the back of his tongue. “Just help me get back.” Izaya takes a breath, shivers through an exhale. “ _Please_.”

Shizuo doesn’t answer aloud. He moves instead, stepping forward over the gap between them slowly so Izaya will have a chance to hear him coming. He can still see Izaya’s shoulders tense when the chair shifts with Shizuo’s hold closing on the handles, can still hear the hiss of the sharp inhale the other takes; but Izaya doesn’t snap at him to move away, and after a moment Shizuo pushes forward to ease them both out onto the sidewalk again.

It’s a long walk, especially moving as deliberately slowly as Shizuo is, and they make it in complete silence but for the sound of their forward motion. Izaya doesn’t talk again, and Shizuo doesn’t try to offer comfort or apology either one. He can’t trust his voice to smoothness, and he doesn’t want Izaya to hear the catch of tension in his throat.

He’s put enough of a burden on the other for one day.


	24. Present

Shizuo was planning on leaving Izaya at his front door.

He’s spent the entire distance to the other’s hotel room collecting guilt in his veins like lead, feeling it settle into him like it’s coating his bones with a heaviness enough to weight even his irrepressible strength to obedience. He doesn’t know what to say, feels certain that even his best attempt at an apology will be useless even if Izaya listens, which he’s not at all sure the other is even capable of at the moment. So he lets his silence speak for him, and keeps his movements as slow and careful as he can, and hopes in some distant, resigned way that his efforts will at least prevent him making anything worse before he can retreat across the distance between their hotels and leave Izaya to do whatever it is he needs to do to collect himself before they reopen the question of whether Shizuo’s presence is more harm than help. Shizuo has made up his own mind, quietly, between the rhythm of his footfalls on the sidewalk and the sound of Izaya’s exhausted breathing in front of him; but it’s only half his decision at best, and maybe less that, and he might think he should go but leaving without Izaya’s permission seems as much as act of violence as forcing his company on the other would be. He’s as trapped in the city as Izaya is trapped in his wheelchair, both of them tangled together with the past and the present and the possibilities of the future until every decision is complicated five times over by the different factors to consider. So Shizuo focuses on the simple, keeps his mind on the next hour instead of the next week, and when they draw to a stop in front of Izaya’s hotel room door it’s the immediate future he’s looking forward to, the relief of isolation shortly to be granted him by the barrier of Izaya’s door and the unaccompanied walk back to his own empty room.

It takes Izaya a moment to get the door open. He has to work his key out of his pocket, and while this process doesn’t look to be overly complicated it takes him a few minutes, as if all his movements are dragging through thick syrup instead of the relative ease of air. Shizuo lets the handles of Izaya’s chair go while the other finds his key, but he stays close; he’s willing to push Izaya forward into the room if he needs to, but there’s no way he’s going to step over that barrier without Izaya’s explicit permission. So he hovers in the space behind Izaya’s shoulders, his distracted attention skipping over the wind-tangled dark of the other’s hair and the angle of his shoulders under the weight of his jacket, and then Izaya fits his keycard into the lock, and the door clicks open, and Shizuo takes a breath of anticipation as Izaya pushes the door in to grant them access to his room. For a moment he’s reaching for the handles of the chair, anticipating the request while he waits for Izaya to voice it; but Izaya’s reaching for the electronic controls instead and pressing relatively-steady fingers to them, and Shizuo takes a half-step back instead of forward and lets his hands fall back to his sides as the start of relief spreads to fill his chest.

“I’ll see you later,” he says, his thoughts halfway down the hallway, his weight shifting back to move his body to follow. There’s no real sincerity in his throat; he doesn’t think about the words at all, doesn’t feel them with any particular weight as he speaks. He’s barely even seeing Izaya anymore, which means that when the other twists with a sudden burst of speed Shizuo doesn’t have time to make sense of it before there’s pressure at his wrist and the sudden weight of a hold digging into his skin. He startles instinctively, jerking his hand back with more strength than he intends; but Izaya’s grip doesn’t ease and Shizuo’s reflexive reaction only succeeds in dragging the other sideways and half-out of his chair.

“ _Don’t_ ,” Izaya grates, his voice raw as much on desperation as on the afterimage of his panic from earlier. He’s not looking at Shizuo’s face; his attention is fixed on the other’s sleeve, his mouth set into a line more tense than Shizuo has ever seen from him before. His grip is so painfully tight that Shizuo can feel the weight of each of Izaya’s fingers digging into bruises against his skin.

Shizuo goes perfectly still. The weight of the door swings shut again, creaking as it moves to latch itself back into place, but Izaya doesn’t turn; he stays where he is, tilted forward far over the arm of his wheelchair and with his fingers clutching to shadows under Shizuo’s skin. He doesn’t lift his head, doesn’t ease his mouth; Shizuo can’t see his eyes at all, can’t see anything but the absolute rigidity tense against his jaw.

“Okay,” Shizuo finally says, because if he pulls any harder he’s going to drag Izaya out of the chair completely and because Izaya doesn’t seem like he’s planning to offer anything of more clarity than his initial burst of response. “I’ll stay.”

Izaya lets a breath go in a rush of sound too sudden to even sound quite like relief. It sounds more like Shizuo has given him permission to go on living, has granted him a stay of execution. His hold eases on Shizuo’s wrist, he braces himself against the arm of his chair to rock back to upright; but he doesn’t let his grip go completely, even when his movement tugs Shizuo to stumble forward and close against the side of the wheelchair. When he looks back it’s to manage his keycard again; this time he’s moving as soon as the lock clicks open, pushing the handle open almost before he can before reaching for the controls for his chair to move himself forward. Shizuo follows, led by the grip Izaya still has against his wrist through the doorway and into the entrance of the other’s room. It’s not until the door has swung shut to click into place behind them that Izaya lets his grip go, lets his hand fall slack over the edge of the chair like he’s suddenly lost the strength to hold it up. Shizuo is left standing just over his shoulder, his spine prickling discomfort  and his skin flushed with self-consciousness, afraid to move either closer or farther away from Izaya’s reach.

There’s a pause, a breath of silence between them that Shizuo can feel tense and strain over the undercurrent of unstated questions, of answers he’s not sure he wants to hear. Then Izaya says, “Just for a few minutes,” without lifting his head, without looking up to meet Shizuo’s gaze. He sounds exhausted, sounds utterly drained of all energy; if Shizuo hadn’t seen how fast he moved a minute ago he wouldn’t believe it to the be the same person. “Then you can go.”

Shizuo swallows hard, reaches for the coherency that has so abandoned him in the wake of his too-brief infinity of rage. “Are you sure you want me here?”

It comes out more skeptically than he intends it to, the tension in his throat dropping the words over the edge into a strain that sounds judgmental, like he doesn’t trust Izaya to know his own feelings. But Izaya doesn’t hear it, or more likely just doesn’t care enough to reply, because all he says is “It’s better than being alone,” and moves to roll himself farther into the room.

It’s the best answer Shizuo is likely to get. He ducks his head to focus his scattered attention to the blessedly simple task of taking his shoes off, and maybe he’s deliberately delaying or maybe Izaya moves fast to avoid the possibility of an audience for his motion, because by the time Shizuo is getting back to his feet Izaya’s wheelchair is empty alongside the couch and Izaya himself is sitting against the furniture instead of in his chair, tipping his head back against the support behind him so the cushion can bear the burden of his head for him. He’s not looking at Shizuo; in fact he has his eyes shut, is letting his whole expression relax into slack lines that speak more to his exhaustion than anything else yet has. He’s still breathing with some effort, his inhales are still shifting hard across his shoulders; for a minute Shizuo hesitates at the edge of the entryway, staring without any thought in his head except the strange awareness of seeing Izaya look so normal, of seeing his face absent the tension of laughter or terror or calculation. It’s that strange sense of watching instead of being watched again, carrying the same uncomfortable self-awareness with it; but Izaya is letting Shizuo see him like this, _asked_ Shizuo to come in to see him like this, and that has a whole novel’s worth of implications that Shizuo’s mind shies away from looking at too closely.

He clears his throat instead, trying to remind Izaya of his presence as gently as he can. “Can I--”

“Sit down,” Izaya says without opening his eyes or shifting at all. “I promise this isn’t some elaborate ruse to get your guard down.” There’s no real amusement on his voice, there’s barely even an edge of bitterness; he just sounds tired, as if he’s been awake for days running, as if the effort of this conversation is taking the last of his strength before he slides into a coma-deep sleep. “That’s a bit involved even for me.”

Shizuo almost throws back a retort, almost opens the conversation up into the almost-friendly banter they’ve learned to offer each other over the last several days. But then he looks at the weight of Izaya’s lashes against his cheeks, and the slack give of his lips falling into the beginnings of a frown, and the dip of his shoulders like he can’t find the strength to hold them up; and he closes his mouth instead of opening it, and steps forward to pad gently across the floor as ordered.

Izaya looks oddly normal on the couch. His wheelchair is still close to hand, still within easy reach for him and clear eyeshot for Shizuo; but sitting up like he is it’s easier to picture him as he used to be, as if this is Shinra’s couch back when they were all in high school in Ikebukuro together instead of the generically inoffensive furniture of a strange hotel room in a foreign city. It’s odd to see those memories with nostalgia -- even in the past years, Shizuo has only imagined his history with Izaya down a new path, has never attempted to recast the existing events in a different light -- but for just a moment that’s what hits him, sharply and unavoidably, as if the weight of blood staining his shirt and the dark of Izaya’s stare from across Shinra’s living room have been filtered to gold while his attention was elsewhere. In comparison to the viciousness of their last fight and the emotional weight of all their recent interactions, the offhand violence of their high school history looks almost like entertainment, feels almost like playing in Shizuo’s head. He thinks he’d be happy to go back to that now, if he could, thinks he would smile from relief instead of the anticipation of violence if he had that again; but he can’t go back any more than he can change any of the other dozens of things he’s thought about altering, can’t rework his own previous perception of Izaya any more than he can change the situation they’re in now. He’s left to remember the past, and exist in the present, and let time and their action fumble them both towards some future he can’t see clearly as yet.

Izaya takes a breath, then, catching a deep inhale of air that shatters Shizuo’s hazy thought process and jars him back into the present moment with an almost-painful weight. He lifts an arm, his movement that same heavy-slow action that shows all the exhaustion in his body as he shifts to rest his elbow against the back of the couch and let his wrist drape the angle of his hand across his face.

“I’m so tired.” It’s not really a complaint, and it’s not at all the start of a conversation; it’s just a statement, framed as softly as if Izaya really has no expectation of Shizuo hearing or caring about it. Shizuo suspects Izaya would have said it without his presence too, that the words would have been given to the cold uncaring of an empty room were it not for his presence there to fill the quiet with the sound of his breathing. There’s something painful in the thought of it, in the image of Izaya leaning back against the support of the couch and struggling even to lift his arm with no one to see, with no one to help if he needs it. Shizuo wonders suddenly how Izaya made it back to his room at all after their interlude in Shizuo’s hotel, the one that ended in Shizuo throwing all the violence that his words could offer against what he had thought was a steel wall that turned out to be made of tissue paper. It must have been agonizing for Izaya, even with the electronic controls of his chair to propel him forward; and there was just this room waiting for him, empty and still and silent as Shizuo’s own when he wakes from the nightmares that at least for him are blessedly rare. Shizuo can see it too-clearly in his head, can picture Izaya’s heavy-slow struggle to move through the necessities of daily life with no one here to help him no matter how exhausted he gets, and _it’s better than being alone_ echoes in his head, and knots in his throat, and suddenly he can barely breathe for the tension of tears catching into the gaps between his ribs.

“Izaya-kun.” He says it carefully, framing the syllables with enough delicacy that they feel foreign, that whatever habitual cadence he holds on his tongue is stripped clear to leave the sound strange with unusual gentleness at his lips. “Can I touch you?”

There’s a pause. When Shizuo looks up Izaya’s not watching him; he still has his hand draped over his face, still has most of his features hidden in the shadow of his fingers. But then he takes a breath, a deep one like he’s bracing himself, and says, “That’s more than a little foreboding, Shizu-chan,” as he tips his head to look towards Shizuo. His hand is still blocking the light, is still casting the weight of a shadow over his eyes; but Shizuo can see the dark of Izaya’s lashes framing his attention, can see the color of his eyes cast nearly to black by the absence of clear illumination.

Shizuo can’t find even a shadow of irritation to meet Izaya’s weak attempt at teasing. “Just your shoulder,” he says without looking away from the darkness of Izaya’s stare clinging to his features. “If you think it would help.”

Izaya watches him for a moment. His mouth is soft, his expression so completely blank that Shizuo can’t get any kind of a read on the thoughts in his head. He might not be thinking anything at all. When his eyelashes flutter it’s like a surrender, his gaze dropping to fall to Shizuo’s hand and slide away out to the window of his room, and when he tips his head to the side it’s as good as a nod for permission.

Shizuo moves very slowly. There’s only a few feet of distance between them, but he crosses them with painful care, keeping his focus on Izaya’s face to catch the least flicker of strain in the other’s expression. But Izaya doesn’t watch him coming, or doesn’t care that he’s moving, and even when Shizuo’s fingers brush against his shoulder he doesn’t tense the way he did earlier when Shizuo closed his hands against the handles of the wheelchair. He stays very still, slack with exhaustion clear all through the weight of his limbs, and when Shizuo slides his fingers in against the curve of the other’s shoulder Izaya’s eyelashes flutter a moment before he tips sideways, very slightly, to press his weight against Shizuo’s palm. He doesn’t lift his head, doesn’t make eye contact with Shizuo at all; but the pressure is unquestionably there, the permission in the motion clear without needing the effort of speech to convey it. Shizuo lets his hand slide farther, traces out the line of Izaya’s shoulder under his palm, and Izaya bows his head forward to give Shizuo space to follow the curve of his collar against the back of his neck, to fit the weight of his arm around the other’s shoulders. Shizuo stretches out over the distance between them, his heart starting to skip faster in his chest; and Izaya reaches out to push against the arm of the couch and slide himself sideways to close the gap entirely. His elbow catches against Shizuo’s side, his arm catching and angling between them in a way that can’t possibly be comfortable; but he’s tipping his head to lean against Shizuo’s shoulder, and his shoulders are fitting inside the curve of Shizuo’s arm, and Shizuo doesn’t know what to do so he does the obvious, does what he would do were this anyone not Izaya, were this just another human being in need of comfort, and lets his arm drape warm and heavy around the span of Izaya’s shoulders.

Izaya doesn’t move again, doesn’t lift his head to look at Shizuo or move his arm to a more comfortable position or even open his mouth to speak. He just stays where he is, pressed awkwardly against Shizuo’s side like he’s afraid to shift and startle away the strange peace fitting between the pace of Shizuo’s racing heart and the exhausted catch of Izaya’s breathing against the fabric of the other’s shirt. Shizuo’s pulse is thrumming in his throat, beating as hard and fast as it ever has in a fight; but his touch stays gentle, his hold stays careful, as all the adrenaline in his veins flickers to light him up fever-bright from the inside out instead of flaring to cool and die in a single burst of incandescent rage.

Shizuo doesn’t think he’s ever felt quite so aware of the present before.


	25. Relax

Shizuo’s still awake when his phone rings.

He ought to be in bed. It’s well past midnight, the digits on the clock in his hotel room have long since clicked over into three instead of the four that indicated the close of the last day. But he can’t imagine sleeping, can barely find it in him to sit still on the couch; watching television is an impossibility, focusing on some fictional story more than he can muster the attention for. He’s been standing at the window of his room instead, watching the motion of the people on the street below with an idle attention that absorbs hours without him noticing. Celty texted an hour or two after he got home from Izaya’s hotel room, offering an update on the latest news from Ikebukuro that managed to absorb Shizuo’s attention for nearly a half-hour while they texted back and forth; but then she had asked _How’s it going for you?_ and Shizuo had paused for almost five minutes before he could think of a response. The basic _good_ is a lie at worst and an absurd understatement at best, but anything more detailed starts to unfold into a story greater than Shizuo is ready yet to embark on. He can still feel the sharp edges of Izaya’s body pressed against his side as if the weight of Izaya’s elbow bruised deeper under his skin than the cut of the other’s knife ever did, and he can’t figure out, yet, if he’s terrified or exhilarated by the events of this afternoon. In the end he says _i don’t know_ , sticking to absolute sincerity rather than trying to compose a polite lie, and Celty had barely hesitated before offering back _Do you want to talk about it?_ with the careful consideration as much a part of her as Shizuo’s strength is of him. It made him smile, even if only for a moment, and he didn’t have to think at all to give back the sincerity of _not right now. maybe soon_ with the warmth of real hope in him at the second phrase. He turns back to the window after that, watches the sun set into golds and reds before sinking into the shadows of dusk, and by the time full night has fallen his eyes have adjusted to the dark enough that he doesn’t think to move to turn on the overhead light to grant more active illumination to his room. He just stays where he is, with his thoughts meditatively still and his attention clinging to the movement of strangers on the street below, and then his phone rings, and he reaches to answer it without looking at the number.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hi,” Izaya says. “Did I wake you up?”

“No.” Shizuo feels very calm, like the stress of earlier has emptied him out completely and left him clear and clean as glass, has made him a cup waiting to be filled with whatever emotion is offered to him. “I haven’t slept.”

“Oh.” Izaya doesn’t sound surprised in spite of the hour; he sounds completely flat, like all the signs of emotion have been entirely stripped from him and left him as blank as a doll.

Shizuo blinks out into the dusk outside, reaches for the rhythm of normal conversation between the gaps of hesitation between them. “Did you?”

“I did.” The answer comes fast, like a door slamming shut, the weight of the words carrying the finality of a gunshot until Shizuo doesn’t have to ask, doesn’t need Izaya to confirm the lingering weight of a nightmare with words.

“Do you want to talk?” he asks instead, jumping past the piece they don’t need to the next question, the next step of the almost-familiar dance of conversation between them.

Izaya’s breath comes loud against the receiver of the phone. “Could you come over?”

Shizuo blinks out at the night, his expression falling blank for a moment of surprise; but “Sure,” is what he says out loud, his voice still so steady as to cover any indication of the shock in him at the unexpected question.

“Okay,” Izaya says. “I’ll see you soon.” There’s a pause, a silence oddly weighted with expectation; then “Thanks,” quick against the receiver, and the line goes dead as Izaya hangs up.

It’s a faster walk than Shizuo expected it to be. There’s no one on the streets at all, and hardly anyone on the sidewalk; those that are out keep their heads down, keep their eyes focused on their feet and whatever internal concerns have pushed them to wander the streets of the city at one in the morning. This city is smaller than Ikebukuro; even in the middle of the night, Ikebukuro carries a handful of people at every crossroads, clusters of friends or couples holding hands or just individuals out for a late-night stroll through the warm glow of the nighttime city. But Shizuo only sees three people in the double handful of blocks it takes him to get to Izaya’s hotel, and even the streets themselves are darker, lit only by streetlamps that gap over wider distances and seem to offer dimmer illumination than the bright signs of his city. By the time Shizuo arrives at the hotel the interior lights are painfully bright against his night-adjusted vision, the glow of them enough to make him cringe as he steps through the front doorway, and the ache at the back of his head has only just started to ease by the time he makes it to the door to Izaya’s room. His knock is gentle as much in consideration of the thrum of pain in his own head as the lateness of the hour, and Izaya’s “Come in” is soft too, barely loud enough for Shizuo to hear it on the other side of the door. The handle turns as Shizuo pushes it, the door gives way to the force of his motion, and when he steps forward into Izaya’s room it’s without waiting for an invitation.

The room is darker than the main hall of the hotel. Nearly all the lights are off; there’s only one on, and that a lamp on a table halfway across the room that is barely enough to throw the rest of the space into a faint haze of illumination. Izaya’s on the couch again, though Shizuo can see the bedsheets are still rumpled with the marks of his attempt at sleep instead of yet smoothed to impersonal tidiness; he’s tipped far to one side, his head pillowed on one arm and his legs up across the cushions next to him. He barely stirs as Shizuo comes in, only twisting to glance briefly over his shoulder; he’s turning back to the window even before he says “Lock the door,” in that same drained tone he used on the phone.

Shizuo locks the door. It’s strange how much of a difference it makes, to hear the sound of the bolt sliding into place behind him; it’s as if a wall has fallen into place, something marking out the difference between _public_ and _private_ to leave he and Izaya alone together in a way he would never have guessed they would be even a week ago. Now it seems...understandable, if perhaps not ordinary, but even the concept of this becoming normal seems less impossible in imagination than it would have once. Shizuo can see the shape of things shifting around him the same way they did this afternoon, the same way they have been since he glimpsed Izaya in the crowd that first day, as if the structure of his entire life has turned to mercury to spill through his fingers whenever he tries to close his grip on it. It’s disorienting to have everything he once took for granted prove so much malleable than he ever expected it to; but then he’s been undermining those foundations all on his own without Izaya’s presence at all, working at his own assumptions the way one would wiggle a loose tooth until it should be no surprise that they topple so easily now.

“You can come in,” Izaya says, repeating his initial invitation without lifting his head from the couch. Shizuo blinks, startled back into the present by the sound of the other’s voice, and when he moves it’s to toe his shoes off by the door and push them neatly aside before coming farther into the room. He’s not sure if Izaya means him to sit on the couch -- there’s no space for him as it is, and no other options immediately available -- but Izaya pushes himself upright as Shizuo approaches and reaches out to catch a hand against his knees so he can urge his legs sideways and over the edge of the couch to make space. Even in the dark Shizuo can see the grimace of pain that flickers over the other’s face, can hear the hiss of breath that Izaya takes, but the motion is done before Shizuo can offer another solution, and when Izaya looks up at him Shizuo doesn’t wait for more of an invitation than the obvious intent in the other’s action.

Izaya moves closer as soon as Shizuo sits down. There’s no hesitation this time, none of the tentative awkwardness that held him stiff and strained through the whole of their earlier interaction; he just tips himself sideways almost before Shizuo is settled to let his whole weight fall hard against the support of the other’s shoulder. Shizuo has to turn in to free his arm, has to work to maneuver himself to some measure of freedom, but Izaya doesn’t pull away and doesn’t flinch even when Shizuo carefully drapes the weight of his arm over the other’s shoulders. He just leans harder against the resistance Shizuo offers, his whole body going so slack with exhaustion that the weight of him nearly carries the force of a shove against Shizuo’s chest. He’s thinner than Shizuo thought he was; not that it’s something he’s ever really considered, but he hadn’t expected the way Izaya’s shoulderblade digs in against him like a razor’s edge, or the way his elbow feels like the hilt of a knife against his ribs. Shizuo makes a face at the bruising force of the impact, shifts to adjust his hold around Izaya’s shoulders, and Izaya moves too, turning himself in towards Shizuo so he can twist his arm free from the position it’s pinned to between them. The shift presses his head harder against Shizuo’s shoulder, turns his whole body in like he’s aligning himself to Shizuo’s chest; but it eases the sharp edges too, lets the dip of Izaya’s shoulder fit close against the space under Shizuo’s arm around him and leaves Shizuo to support the exhausted slump of Izaya’s body against him.

Shizuo’s pulse is racing. He feels like he’s run a mile, like his heart is thrumming itself to hummingbird speed against the inside of his chest; Izaya must be able to feel it, with how close they’re pressed, but he doesn’t say anything and barely moves at all. It’s bizarre to have Izaya pressed so close against him, strange to have the other capitulating so completely to boneless vulnerability with Shizuo so near to hand. Shizuo is accustomed to others cringing back from him, is used to seeing fear behind the stares turned on him; he’s just started to get used to seeing that same reflexive fright behind Izaya’s eyes where there never used to be any, has just started to learn to move slowly and carefully to hold back the bright flare of fear in the other’s expression. It’s another thing entirely to have the warmth of Izaya’s body pressed flush against his, to have the implicit trust of the other’s weight relying upon the support he offers. He can feel adrenaline rushing through his veins, can feel the threat of too-much strength humming down his arm and tensing in his fingertips; but he doesn’t move, and doesn’t tense, just lets his hold settle around Izaya’s shoulders with all the comfort weight and stillness can grant. Izaya turns his head and presses his forehead hard against Shizuo’s shoulder; Shizuo can feel the warmth of the other’s breathing tangling through the fabric of his shirt to press hot against his skin. He blinks into the dim of the room, his eyes straining for clarity in the lack of illumination; and Izaya sighs a breath, and lifts his arm, and catches his hold around Shizuo’s waist.

Shizuo goes utterly still. His skin prickles all over his body, tingling as if with a shudder of electricity; but Izaya’s still leaning against him, and Shizuo still has his arm wrapping around the other’s shoulders, and he doesn’t want to tense himself into an accidental bruise of his fingerprints on Izaya’s skin. So he stays still, and breathes fast, and after an infinite moment Izaya takes a long inhale at his shirt and sags harder against him, as if he’s letting some final knot go from the curve of his spine.

It takes Shizuo longer to relax – Izaya doesn’t weigh very much, but it’s still hard to find his breath with the burden of the other’s body against him – but he has the time to spare. Neither of them seem to have the least intention of moving now that they’ve made it here.


	26. Understand

Shizuo makes it back to his hotel room by the time the sun is creeping above the jagged line of the city horizon. He spent hours on the couch in Izaya’s room with the warmth of the other pressing hard against his side and his hand slowly falling asleep; it wasn’t comfortable, even when exhaustion finally won the edge over adrenaline and started to suggest sleep as a better and better idea. But Shizuo didn’t want to move, even if Izaya had been utterly still for hours and showed no sign of being disturbed by any motion Shizuo might take; everything felt precarious, as if they were both standing together on a ledge and could fall over the edge at any moment without looking to see what’s on the other side. So Shizuo held very still, didn’t move and didn’t sleep and barely breathed, and stared at the dark of Izaya’s hotel room wall as if he could see what was over the lip of that cliff if he just watched the dark long enough. He didn’t -- there’s nothing to see there but the bland pattern of hotel walls everywhere, after all -- but eventually Izaya said “You can go back” against Shizuo’s shoulder without giving any warning at all that he was even awake. Shizuo had thought the other was asleep, or maybe hoped he was, but if Izaya managed to drift back into unconsciousness he achieved both the sleeping and waking with such complete silence that Shizuo didn’t notice at all. Shizuo had hummed a sound of acknowledgment, maybe layered into the very beginnings of agreement, and Izaya had shifted against him, letting his arm finally draw away from Shizuo’s waist and pushing himself back to upright so Shizuo’s numb arm could drop back to his side. Shizuo’s legs were stiff with inaction, he felt like they ought to creak when he got to his feet; but Izaya didn’t comment on the care with which Shizuo moved, just tipped himself sideways against the arm of the couch and gazed at the wall that Shizuo had finally turned away from. He was still like that when Shizuo went to leave, his eyes open but unreadable in the dark of the room, and Shizuo didn’t speak to break the silence, wouldn’t have even if he knew what to say. He just went to the door, and slid his shoes on with deliberate care, and then left, waiting until the door latched shut behind him before he made his way down the hallway and out to the front of the hotel.

He has a lot to think about. He’s had to lot to think about since he arrived, since he heard the sound of a familiar laugh, since he saw the blood drain from Izaya’s face from across the distance of a hotel room. But there’s more, now, more every day, as if once started the avalanche of information can’t be stopped. Izaya panicking, Izaya smiling, Izaya _apologizing_ , Izaya going through all the regular motions of being a human that Shizuo never used to see in him, never used to believe were there at all. Izaya laughing like there’s some shared joke between them, Izaya’s voice on the other end of a phone line too late at night for good news; Izaya warm under the weight of Shizuo’s arm, turning in against the support of the other like he’s something different than the monster Izaya always called him, something else than the monster reflected in Izaya’s wide-eyed stare at that first meeting. It’s overwhelming, incomprehensible, more than Shizuo can process; and he’s tired, exhausted down to the core of his being with lack of sleep and too-much-thought, so he doesn’t try to process it, doesn’t try to make sense out of the tangled threads of interaction and conversation and contact that have woven themselves into his life over the past several days. He just walks, letting memories vivid from the past few days flicker at will in time with the rhythm of his footfalls as the sun rises above the tops of the buildings surrounding him to cast the bright of morning light onto his shoulders and turn the faint shadows around him clear and crisp with illumination. Shizuo’s hair is warm with the light by the time he arrives at his hotel, the glow of the morning radiant across his shoulders; and then he steps past the front doors, and into the cool conditioned air of the lobby, and exhaustion hits him as if he’s walked into a wall. He takes the elevator instead of his usual stairs, leans against the wall as the machinery carries him up the very few stories to his floor, and then he stumbles down the hallway, as heavy on his feet as if it’s alcohol in his veins instead of exhaustion, and unlocks his door in the middle of a yawn so wide he can hear it strain in his ears. His shoes are left by the door, his vest and shirt stripped off more for comfort than with real attention, and then he falls into bed without bothering to draw the blinds over the glow of dawn at the windows.

Shizuo wakes up hours later, when the heat of the sun streaming onto the bed is too much to bear in comfort anymore. He’s still half-asleep when he makes it to the shower; fifteen minutes later he feels more conscious and far cleaner, if still like he’s moving through a haze of lingering exhaustion that will requires an overlong night’s rest to clear from his mind. He considers getting something to eat, successfully does get himself a glass of water, and he’s standing at the window staring blankly out at the sky when his phone rings and he answers without looking.

“Hello?”

“Shizu-chan.” There’s no give to Izaya’s voice at all; Shizuo’s nickname is a statement, acknowledgment of the other’s existence more than a real greeting. “I’m coming over.”

Shizuo blinks at the city in front of him. “I was just going to go and get lunch.”

“I’m bringing food. Start water for tea, I’ll be there in a minute.”

Shizuo doesn’t even really want to argue the point. “Okay.”

He does manage to get the water started to boil before there’s a knock at the door, if only barely; Izaya wasn’t kidding about his arrival time. When Shizuo answers the door Izaya comes forward without bothering to look up at him, wheeling himself past the width of the entrance as Shizuo takes a half-step to the side to make room for him. There’s a bag hanging from the side of the chair, the plastic of it clouded with steam and wafting a smell into the air that makes Shizuo’s stomach knot on hunger; Izaya continues on into the main space of the room while Shizuo shuts the door behind him, moving as easily into Shizuo’s temporary home as if he belongs here. He reaches for the bag, swings it off his chair and out to the low table in front of the couch; then, with an attempt at an off-hand tone that doesn’t quite succeed: “Do you mind if I sit on your couch, Shizu-chan?” with his head still ducked so his hair covers most of the details of his expression. “It’ll be easier to reach the table if I do.”

It takes Shizuo a minute to parse the relevance of the question, a moment to realize what exactly it is Izaya is asking. “Oh. Sure.” Izaya glances up at him, then, but his eyes are still too dark for Shizuo to get a read on, and after a moment Shizuo looks away and back to the water still quietly not-boiling against the heater. “Do whatever you want.”

“Thanks,” Izaya drawls, his tone hitting something like sarcasm in the back of his throat, but Shizuo can hear him shift in his chair, so he assumes the other is taking advantage of his offered permission. Shizuo keeps his focus on the water for a minute, two, staring blankly at the slow-rising bubbles as it starts to heat; then Izaya again, sounding close to laughter this time: “You don’t have to avert your gaze, you know, Shizu-chan.” When Shizuo looks back up Izaya’s on the couch instead of in his chair, turned around with an arm over the back so he can offer the beginnings of a smirk back at the other. “It’s not really all that immodest a process, I promise.”

“Oh,” Shizuo says, feeling his cheeks starting to heat with self-consciousness at Izaya putting the hard shell of words around his vague sense of discomfort. “I didn’t think it was. I don’t think that. I just…”

“I’m not as self-conscious about it as you are,” Izaya tells him, still with the dark focus of his eyes on Shizuo’s face. “I’ve had two years to get used to the idea of being in a wheelchair, you know. It’s not exactly a new situation for me.”

“Don’t you--” Shizuo starts, and then the water beeps the high electronic note telling him it’s done and he cuts himself off with the distraction of getting the tea steeped and poured into the matching plain cups the hotel provides. By the time he’s crossing the room with a mug in each hand Izaya’s unwrapped the food he brought and is leaning forward over the coffee table to reach for a bite. His movements are graceful, elegant with the pinpoint precision Shizuo remembers from their chases in Ikebukuro; it’s strange to see that familiar motion translated away from hairsbreadth dodges and the sweep of a knife to something as mundane as chopsticks reaching for a bite of food. Izaya doesn’t say anything when Shizuo sets down one of the mugs by his elbow, but he does reach out to push one of the unopened containers over the table in offering, and Shizuo is really more in the mood for lunch than thanks anyway.

They’re both silent for several minutes. It’s a simple kind of peace, formed entirely out of shared hunger and exhaustion from the night before, but it still shivers something down Shizuo’s spine warmer than the sunlight felt against his skin this morning, something more of a comfort than the relief of sleep for his exhausted mind when he fell into bed. It still feels tentative, still feels like a soap bubble that could burst at a moment’s notice; but it’s more than Shizuo ever expected to have with Orihara Izaya so close beside him, and runs deeper than anything he’s ever achieved alone, so he lets it linger without making any attempt to shatter the quiet.

It’s Izaya who breaks it, eventually. He subsides from lunch after fifteen minutes, leaning back against Shizuo’s couch with his cup of tea in his hands and leaving the other to continue working his way through what remains of the meal. When Shizuo glances at him Izaya’s looking out the window instead of at him, his eyes dark and mouth relaxed into what almost looks like a frown; but his fingers are relaxed against his cup, showing none of the white-knuckled panic Shizuo has learned to dread, so Shizuo looks away again and returns his focus to finishing off one of the containers of food in front of them. He’s nearly done with the last of the noodles when Izaya says, with no lead-in at all, “Don’t I what?”

Shizuo looks back up. Izaya’s watching him now, his focus turned in to track the other entirely; his hands are still relaxed, his grip against his cup still easy. Shizuo swallows his last bite and lets his chopsticks fall against the side of the container. “What?”

“You were going to say something,” Izaya informs him without so much as a flicker behind his eyes. “While you were making the tea. I said you didn’t need to be self-conscious and you sounded like you had something to say.”

Shizuo blinks. “Oh.” It takes him a moment to backtrack through his own line of thinking but Izaya doesn’t interrupt him; he just waits, silent and almost-patient but for the focus of his stare while Shizuo frames the question into the shape he wants in his mind. It feels heavier than he wants it to, weighted with more judgment than he intends; but Izaya is waiting, and Shizuo’s thoughts are hazy on exhaustion, and finally he just says it, letting his curiosity take shape in the air between them.

“You said that you could get therapy, before.” He looks away, back to the containers of food in front of them and the curve of his own half-finished mug of tea. “Don’t you _want_ to get better?”

There’s a beat of silence. Shizuo can hear the breath Izaya takes, the inhale as if he’s bracing himself to say something; and then the exhale that comes without any words with it, a sigh so faint it would be lost to hearing if the room weren’t so quiet. Shizuo glances sideways without turning his head but Izaya’s not looking at him anymore; he has his head tipped down, is gazing into thechin surface of his tea with the blank inattention that says he’s thinking about something else entirely. Shizuo can see the shadows of sleeplessness under Izaya’s eyes, the bruise-purples so familiar he’s almost stopped noticing them.

“Of course I do,” Izaya says into his tea, his voice flat as if he’s reciting something memorized, as if he’s reading from a page instead of speaking for himself. His mouth is flat, his expression blank; but his fingers are tight against the curve of his cup, his fingertips pressing hard against the ceramic. He shifts his weight against the couch to cross one leg over the other; it’s a shaky movement, lacking any of his usual grace. “Why wouldn’t I want to get better, Shizu-chan.”

“I don’t know,” Shizuo says, even though that didn’t sound like a question as much as a stripped-flat statement, even though he’s watching Izaya’s legs instead of his face. When he speaks it’s to repeat an old question, to reframe unanswered curiosity with the weight of impending certainty. “Why do you do that if it hurts?”

There’s another breath of silence, this one entirely unbroken even by a too-loud inhale. Then Izaya moves again, uncrossing his legs to fall heavy against the couch, and says “ _Because_ it hurts,” as if it’s an answer in its own right.

Shizuo doesn’t want to understand. It would be easier to dodge this comprehension, easier to push this aside and back onto the list of things he doesn’t understand about Orihara Izaya, the list that used to be filled with every facet of the other’s existence. But that same list is getting shorter every day, narrowing with every piece of new information that Shizuo gains, and when he blinks it’s his own history he sees: a child’s bones breaking under too-much stress, the raw edge of skin torn open from punching against brick, pavement, cement, the ache of aftereffect in a too-familiar hospital bed that always felt like some kind of a penance for the things he did in the grip of unbearable rage.

He’s in no place to judge Izaya for this. When it comes to atoning for psychological guilt with physical pain, Shizuo is the resident expert.


	27. Caught

They go back to the coffee shop the next day. It’s a strange shift, the stranger for how odd it feels; Shizuo feels like it should be a relief just to be on neutral ground, to be coexisting in space that doesn’t explicitly belong to either of them. But the cafe feels more crowded than it did before, the weight of conversation and the presence of others are oppressive as they weren’t before, and when Shizuo sees Izaya lifting a hand to wave him down from the other side of the room he has a brief, bizarre moment of relief at having someone to move towards, at having a goal to his action. Izaya has two cups in front of him instead of one, is playing with the handle of his as Shizuo approaches; he slides the other across the table as Shizuo draws his chair back, making an offering of the movement at the same time he gives a smirk across the table by way of greeting.

“Your hot chocolate,” he says. “Caffeine-free, even.”

“Thanks,” Shizuo says, catching the cup between his hands and drawing it closer to himself. It’s too hot to drink, but the weight of Izaya’s lingering attention pushes him to lift the cup to his mouth, to taste a sip of the liquid even as some part of him is flinching back from the expected burn. It’s not as bad as he expected -- it’s warm against his lips but the liquid is actually tolerable across his tongue and down his throat -- and the flavor is better than he remembers, sweet and rich like he doesn’t recall it being at this shop before. He pauses for a moment, startled by the taste; but when he looks back up Izaya isn’t watching him anymore, instead has his head bowed over his own cup and is blowing ostentatiously to cool it.

“I could get you coffee next time,” he suggests, glancing up long enough to flash a smirk Shizuo’s way. “If you wanted to try growing up for a change.”

“Shut up,” Shizuo informs him. “Just drinking coffee doesn’t make you more mature.”

“Sure it doesn’t,” Izaya says with a shimmer of laughter taut under his voice to make the words a mockery. He’s still watching Shizuo like he’s expecting a rebuttal, his mouth still tense on what looks like the beginnings of a laugh; but Shizuo just contents himself with rolling his eyes, and taking another sip from his cup, and Izaya laughs and gives over the subject in favor of sipping his own drink himself.

There’s quiet for a moment, peace falling with strange familiarity around them; and then Shizuo sets his cup down, and deliberately looks out the window, and asks, “How’d you sleep last night?” with as much neutrality as he can manage on the words.

Izaya huffs a laugh from the other side of the table, his brief amusement half-muffled by the swallow of coffee he’s currently taking. “You mean did I have nightmares about you beating me half to death as usual,” he says, a statement and not a question, even a rhetorical one. “I slept great, actually. Don’t I look refreshed and chipper, Shizu-chan?”

Shizuo opens his mouth to respond -- Izaya _does_ look better than usual, not least because of the tug of his smile at his mouth and the warm light of the sunshine coming through the window to pick hints of color out of his hair -- and his phone buzzes loud enough in his pocket for both of them to look at it. Shizuo reaches for it without thinking; when he sees the caller ID he flinches.

“Sorry,” he says even as he’s answering the call. “One sec.” Izaya waves his hand to dismiss the trouble of the interruption and leans back in his chair to look out the window with ostentatious disinterest, but Shizuo’s not really looking at him anymore; he’s focused on the receiver he’s lifting to his ear as he says, “Tom-san,” with polite formality.

“Shizuo.” Tom’s voice is calm as ever, even over the distance of the intervening phone lines between his end of the call and Shizuo’s. “How are you doing?”

“I’m fine,” Shizuo says, hearing his voice fall into the easy tone he takes with Tom, with Celty, with people not-Izaya. It’s strange to speak normally, without tension in his throat and sticking his words on his own overthought consideration of them. “Is everything alright?”

“Oh, yeah, no problem.” Tom sounds sincere enough in the statement that even the minimal concern in Shizuo’s mind undoes itself without further resistance. “You’ve added a couple weeks to your vacation. Do you think you’ll be staying longer than you have already?”

“Oh.” Shizuo blinks unseeing at the interior of the coffee shop. It’s strange to be reminded so vividly of the life he left behind, the life still waiting for him to return to it. He feels like it’s been years since he left, like the whole city must have upended itself in his absence as thoroughly as he has inverted his own life. He glances back across the table to Izaya; but the other is still staring out the window, leaning forward over the table so he can curl the fit of his hands around the coffee cup in front of him. He doesn’t appear to be listening at all. “I’m not sure. Maybe.”

“Alright.” Tom hesitates for a moment -- Shizuo almost thinks he’s about to let the conversation end there -- but then he sighs, and goes on carefully. “I’m glad you’re taking some time off, Shizuo, but I have to admit some of the work is piling up since you’ve been gone. It wasn’t too bad at first but people are starting to realize you’re not around and, well, frankly I’m not as intimidating by myself as I am when I’ve got you to back me up. It would be great to have you back as soon as you’re able.”

Shizuo’s skin flushes chill with sudden guilt, the forgotten responsibilities he left behind him catching back up to run down his spine like ice. “I’m sorry, Tom-san,” he says, and means it. “If you need me I can come back right away.” There’s movement from the other side of the table, a faint hiss of sound, but Shizuo is staring at the cup in front of him and not watching Izaya at all anymore.

“No, no, no,” Tom says, all but running his words into each other with the sincerity of his refusal. “No, that’s not necessary, Shizuo, really.”

“It wouldn’t be a problem, I could--”

“No,” Tom says, more firmly, and Shizuo closes his mouth and listens as Tom goes on. “It’s been a challenge but it’s nothing we can’t handle for another week or two. I’d rather that you took the time to enjoy your vacation and came back well-rested.”

“Oh,” Shizuo says without trying to explain that what was meant as a vacation has turned into something that is the opposite of restful, most times. “Okay.”

“It would just be nice to have you back,” Tom goes on. “We could really use you around. And everyone misses you, you know.”

Shizuo blinks. “They do?”

“Of course,” Tom says. “You’re one of the fixtures of the city, after all. I’ve had four people come to me asking about you since you left.”

“Oh,” Shizuo says. “I didn’t know.”

“Yeah.” There’s a pause, a moment while Tom stays silent and Shizuo stares unseeing at the table; then: “Just come back soon, alright? Ikebukuro’s not the same without you around.”

Shizuo can feel a pressure against his chest, nostalgia and homesickness he’s been too distracted to note weighting against him so sharply it’s hard to take a breath, hard to speak for how abruptly he’s aching for home, for his friends and his apartment and the familiar streets of his city. “I will.”

“Great,” Tom tells him. “Get back to enjoying yourself. Sorry for interrupting.”

“It’s fine,” Shizuo tells him. “See you soon.” He hangs up, still lost in his own thoughts; for a moment he forgets where he is, even forgets who he’s with for the distraction of what’s waiting for him back in his city.

“You’re leaving.”

It’s not a question. When Shizuo brings his head up and blinks himself into focus on the other side of the table Izaya’s not looking at him, but he’s not looking out the window either; he has his head ducked down, is staring into the cup in front of him with a focus that says more about what he’s trying to avoid looking at than what he is.

Shizuo blinks. “Not right away.”

“I didn’t say right away.” Izaya lifts his cup to his mouth and takes a sip. There’s no pleasure in the motion, no satisfaction as he swallows; it looks almost mechanical, something he’s doing because there’s a cup in his hands rather than from any actual desire for liquid. “You’re going to go back.”

“Yeah.” Shizuo frowns, feels confusion starting to crease across his forehead. “I’m not going to stay here forever.”

“I know,” Izaya says, still without looking up. “You have to go home.” He drags a smile onto his face, coughs a laugh that attempts and completely fails to express amusement. “Do you still have a job at all, Shizu-chan?”

“Yeah,” Shizuo says, letting the simplicity of his answer serve as resistance to Izaya’s poorly-formed attempt at winning a surge of irritation from him. He stares at the dark of Izaya’s bowed head, at the shadows of his hair since he can’t see the other’s eyes himself, and there’s a weight in his chest, something almost guilt and mostly defensiveness rising in his veins like the anger that has been so surprisingly absent from him the last few days. “I was always going to go back eventually.”

“I know,” Izaya says again. “I didn’t expect you to stay here with me forever.” He doesn’t even sound bitter; he sounds resigned instead, like he’s facing down something awful and is bracing himself against whatever comes. It makes Shizuo’s stomach knot, fixes a weight of unpleasant guilt just behind his ribcage, and he knows it shouldn’t, knows that he should hardly be apologizing for finally considering his inevitable return, but rationality has never been very effective with him when it comes to Izaya.

“I wanted to stay to help you,” Shizuo says, his words muting themselves to fit into the hunch of Izaya’s shoulders, to fit into the space of the coffee cup he’s staring so steadily into. “You _are_ getting better, aren’t you?”

Izaya takes a breath, tensing as if he’s going to offer a retort; and then slumps again, all the energy draining out of him at once. “Yes,” he says, sounding more miserable about his own improvement than anything else. “I am getting better.”

“I’m not going right away,” Shizuo attempts, but it’s weak comfort and he knows it is, knows it before he even says the words. Izaya doesn’t look up, doesn’t react at all to the statement; Shizuo is left to stare at him, to feel the silence go strained and uncomfortable between them with unwarranted guilt, with the threat of regrets, with all the things he still wants to say and lacks the words for. His thoughts are jumbled, the shape of the things he wants hazy and unformed still; but there’s one he can see clear, one answer so obvious finally all he can do is open his mouth and let it fall off his lips.

“You could come with me.”

Izaya’s shoulders tense again. Shizuo waits for a moment but the other doesn’t speak, doesn’t give voice to that surge of tension in him, and after a heartbeat Shizuo takes a breath and continues. “You could come back. Ikebukuro is still the same as it was, there’s still a bunch of people you know.” He can feel his chest aching with pressure, can feel the strain of something too fragile to even be called hope forming itself around the idea of having both together: the tentative shape of maybe-friendship between the two of them, the tension of their interactions and the relief of breakthroughs, and his home to go back to, his friends there to see and talk to without the restrictions imposed by distance. Maybe even all of them together, Shinra and Celty and Shizuo and Izaya too, coming back to return to the city he--

“I don’t want to,” Izaya says, his voice dark as his coffee, and Shizuo’s daydream shatters to give way to Izaya looking up at him from the other side of the table, his shoulders still curled in as if to protect himself but his chin lifted, now, at least enough that he can stare at Shizuo. “No one will remember me, I don’t want to go back to that.”

Shizuo doesn’t look away. “I remembered you.”

He can see the shudder in Izaya’s stare, can see the resistance of it crack and shimmer like a mirage for just a moment. There’s the cringe of softness at the corners of Izaya’s eyes, a give to his mouth like the beginnings of surrender; and then he looks back down to his cup, and when he speaks again it’s to the surface of the liquid once more.

“I don’t want to go back like this.” He swallows hard; Shizuo can hear the motion working in his throat. “I was--I’m not that person anymore.”

“So you’re going to stay away forever?” Shizuo asks. There’s a frisson of anger along his spine, the beginning of irritation working its way out into his hands; he can feel his fingers tensing against the table, his hands trying to form themselves to fists as frustration gains traction. “You can’t run from your problems forever, Izaya-kun.”

Izaya looks back up at him. His eyes are dark, his mouth is flat; there’s nothing on his face at all for a moment, no trace of meaning Shizuo can gain from the blank consideration the other is giving him. His attention flickers down for a moment, catches on the angle of Shizuo’s wrists at the table, and Shizuo has a heartbeat of panic, a breath of concern that Izaya’s shoulders will go tense, that the blood will drain from his face as terror takes over the reactions of his body. But when Izaya moves it’s to duck his head, to huff an exhale that turns to a laugh, and when he looks back up there’s a smile caught at the corner of his mouth, undeniably present even if it’s twisting on the self-deprecation heavy in his eyes.

“I guess not,” he admits. “You’re too good at catching me, Shizu-chan.”


	28. Concede

Izaya goes straight back to his hotel after they leave the coffee shop. It’s not that abnormal an occurrence, even if it’s been happening less and less as conversation between them becomes less stilted and more casual; but he goes nearly silent after Shizuo’s call with Tom, and when he declares that he’s going to go home and take a nap Shizuo doesn’t call him out on the lie. He’s willing enough to go back to his own hotel, to sit on the edge of the bed and look at the space that has become familiar over the last few days without him noticing, until it’s started to feel like a haven in spite of the unfamiliar city waiting on the street below. Izaya’s cup is still out on the coffee table from the day before, left there with the other’s departure and not caught during Shizuo’s usual tidying up before bed; he goes to collect it now, rinses it in the sink with more care than the task requires before turning it upside down to dry on the counter. It feels strange, like he’s trying to clear his hotel room of all traces of the other, as if removing Izaya from his immediate vicinity will as easily strip away the only reason Shizuo has to linger so long here in the city, as if he can convince himself into going home if he can just pull the trappings of his life here into order as well. He opens the window to the warmth of fresh air, and pulls his shoes back on, and goes out to wander the streets again, to walk past strangers without seeing them any more than their surroundings while his mind travels back over the streets of Ikebukuro, leaping over the distance between here and there with an ease only ever found in imagination. He pauses at the light at a corner, pulls his cell phone free to type a text to Celty: _i think i’m going to come home soon_ , without any further explanation than that, and he gets a reply before the light changes: _Good. We all miss you_. It’s not until he’s turned back to return to his room some ten minutes later that the follow-up comes, so delayed that it speaks to Celty’s uncertainty about even asking: _What about Izaya?_ with the careful neutrality only written sentences can grant. Shizuo reads the message once, twice, then: _i don’t know_ , and that’s the end of that conversation.

His room is warm when he gets back into it, almost unpleasantly hot even with the shade granted by the enclosed space, but Shizuo doesn’t close the window; he leaves it open, sheds his vest for extra comfort instead of shutting out the fresh air, and lies down across the couch instead of the too-much soft the bed offers. He thinks about turning on the television, about letting the purr of some half-familiar show lull him through the hours of the afternoon; but it’s an idle thought, lost to the too-much warmth filling the room, and in the end he slides into a drowse without reaching for the remote, memories shifting into the immersion of true dreams without giving him a chance to notice the change.

Shizuo naps through the heat of the afternoon, nostalgia and his unconscious imagination making sleep a better alternative than waking, and by the time he stirs it’s to find the air cooling with the approach of sunset, to find the whisper of a breeze working its way through the open window to wind through his hair and stir him back to consciousness. He wakes up slow, drifting back to awareness with the same ease he slid out of it, until when he finally moves to sit up off the couch it’s been nearly fifteen minutes since he first opened his eyes again. He gets to his feet to get a glass of water, still feeling hazy with sleep and slow in his movements; it’s not until he’s halfway through the cup’s worth that he realizes it’s Izaya’s mug he’s using. The thought does something strange along his spine, something a little bit unsettling and a little bit electric; and then his phone buzzes with an incoming call, and Shizuo pulls it free to answer one-handed.

“Hey there,” he says. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” Izaya answers, sounding tired but sincere enough to make the words a simple statement of fact rather than a polite fiction. “When are you going back to Ikebukuro?”

Shizuo blinks, feeling a little like he’s just been sideswiped by a truck he had forgotten was approaching. “I don’t know,” he admits, since it’s easy to offer simple honesty as a reply. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“Okay.” Izaya takes a breath; when he lets it out it’s in a rush, the sound gusting to static against the phone. “I have a proposition.” He pauses, as if to give Shizuo a chance to scoff at the statement or to reject it out-of-hand, but Shizuo stays quiet, and after a moment Izaya continues. “Go with me to physical therapy.”

Shizuo catches a breath, his eyes going wider on shock. For a moment his hand tightens against the handle of the cup in his grip, the ceramic creaking protest at the force. “What?”

“Come with me.” Izaya sounds fixed, focused, so determined Shizuo almost doesn’t hear the way his voice is shaking under the cover of static from the phone. “I don’t--I don’t want to go. I _won’t_ go, on my own.” He lets out a breath against the receiver, hard. “I could if you came with me.”

The electricity along Shizuo’s spine is back. It’s crackling up the line of his spine, hissing in the back of his thoughts and short-circuiting any rationality he might be able to bring to this proposal. “I can’t stay here forever.”

“It wouldn’t be forever,” Izaya says, a little too fast, a little too desperate. Shizuo’s chest tightens on something uncannily close to sympathy. “Just a few weeks. You could leave whenever you wanted.”

Shizuo takes a breath. When he breathes out he can taste the snap of energy on his tongue, like his words are live wires spilling unchecked heat in his throat. “Would you come back to Ikebukuro?”

There’s a moment of absolute silence. Shizuo can’t even hear the sound of Izaya’s breathing against the other end of the phone. Then:  “I’d think about it,” with so much effort on the words that they carry the burden of sincerity that a more flippant tone would strip away.

Shizuo can feel the tension of static in him shiver into reality, can feel it spark to life in his veins for a moment of clarity as it grounds out against the drag of Izaya’s words. “Okay,” he says, and doesn’t even care how warm his voice sounds, how audible the hope is on his tongue. “I’ll stay with you.”

Compared to Izaya’s, it’s not a hard concession to make.


	29. Clarity

At least the waiting room is comfortable.

Shizuo wasn’t sure exactly how far Izaya’s request for his company would extend. He assumed his company for the walk to the physical therapist was a necessity, as well as his presence afterwards; he was ready to follow Izaya all the way through the first appointment, if he needed to, if Izaya was expecting that of him. Izaya wasn’t particularly forthcoming on the subject either; he barely offered the minimal greeting of “Shizu-chan” when he emerged from his hotel room at Shizuo’s knock, and he spent the entire trip to the therapist’s office with his jaw set and mouth shut, and Shizuo didn’t want to try to break through the tension radiating off the other like heat waves into the air. It’s almost worse once they’re there; Shizuo didn’t think to bring anything to do, and he doesn’t want to pull out his phone with Izaya going steadily tenser and paler alongside him, so he just sits as quietly and nonthreateningly as he can manage while Izaya all but hums with stress alongside him. He keeps working over the controls on his chair, tracing out the buttons with his fingertips or tightening his grip against the support of the arm, and he’s worse about his legs, shifting them in place over and over like he can’t get comfortable. Once he crosses them, bouncing one foot where it’s supported in midair; Shizuo almost reaches out for Izaya’s knee in an instinctive response to undo the pain of the position before he thinks through the potential ramifications of the action. He stops himself short of actual contact, manages to stall his action with his fingers extended in the empty space between them; but Izaya huffs an exhale, and when Shizuo looks up the other is watching him and meeting his gaze for the first time since they left the hotel. His eyes are still dark, his face still pale; but his mouth quirks on a smirk, the beginnings of laughter start to form against the shape of his lips, and when he moves it’s to uncross his legs with deliberate attention, making more of a show of the motion than is called for. Shizuo flushes, his cheeks burning with self-consciousness as he draws his hand back to the arm of his chair; but Izaya stills the movement of his legs, at least, and after a moment even lets his right hand fall slack over the arm of his wheelchair. His fingers are close to Shizuo’s, nearly brushing against the back of the other’s hand, and Shizuo can’t stop looking at the gap between them, stares at the space spanning Izaya’s fingertips and his knuckles until the door opens and a nurse asks for the next patient. Shizuo looks at Izaya, starts to push to his feet; and Izaya says “Stay here,” and moves forward fast, before Shizuo has a chance to even sit back down again. He’s still halfway to standing when Izaya follows the nurse’s gesture down the hallway without looking back; it’s not until the door swings shut that Shizuo lets himself fall back to his seat in surrender.

Shizuo doesn’t know how long the appointment is supposed to be. Izaya didn’t volunteer the information and Shizuo hadn’t thought to ask, so he’s left with his phone to while away however long it will be until Izaya emerges again. He sends a few texts, starts up a slow back-and-forth of conversation with Celty; but it’s hard to keep his mind on what he’s doing for more than a few seconds at a time, which completely rules out the possibility of anything more involved. He feels like he’s overcaffeinated, like he can’t get comfortable in his seat no matter what he does; even when he’s perfectly arranged in his chair his mind keeps sliding away, his focus refusing to linger on anything at all except for the strangely bored anticipation holding him in place while he awaits Izaya’s return. Whenever he checks the clock he’s surprised by how little time has passed, until finally he turns his phone off entirely and leans back in his chair to shut his eyes and ignore his anxiety as completely as he can. He can focus instead on his heartbeat, on the rush of air in his lungs as it eases and slows from the strain of tension that was so locking him in place; comfort is starting to settle over him, his body is starting to relax towards something that might even be a drowse against the back of the chair, and he’s not thinking about anything at all, anymore, Izaya or the time or anything beyond the present moment and the slow drift of his thoughts in it. He’s lost somewhere far away, entirely absent from his surroundings at all, when there’s the sound of a door opening, a _click_ and the drag of metal hinges over themselves, and Shizuo is jolted back to full stress in the gap between one heartbeat and the next. His breath catches on adrenaline, his body tenses to tip him forward over his knees; and Izaya’s coming out of the hallway, wheeling himself through the doorway while the same nurse holds the weight of the door open for him. Shizuo can’t see the other’s face for a moment -- Izaya’s looking back to the nurse and the curtain of his hair is covering his features from Shizuo’s perspective -- but he can see the rest of him, can see how little changed Izaya appears to be. The nurse laughs something, and waves, and Izaya lifts a hand to wave back -- and then Shizuo can see the tremor in his fingertips, can see the way Izaya’s arm is shaking very slightly like he can’t quite find the strength to hold it still. Shizuo blinks, starts to push himself to his feet, and then he can see other tells: the way Izaya’s feet are heavy-flat against the brace of his wheelchair, the way his face is pale now with exhaustion instead of anxiety, the way he has his elbow braced against the arm of his chair even as he waves to the nurse. Shizuo wants to say something, wants to give voice to the sudden strain in his chest; but he’s moving instead, stepping forward over the distance of the waiting room, and then Izaya is looking up at him and Shizuo’s movement stalls as if Izaya’s gaze was an order to halt.

“Shizu-chan,” Izaya says. There’s a pause, a moment of hesitation; then his mouth shifts, his lips curling into a smile only a very little bit shaky. “You waited.”

“Are you okay?” Shizuo asks, blurting the question before he has thought it through. “You look…”

Izaya waves his hand as if he can catch Shizuo’s unfinished sentence in his fingers to shove it aside and out of importance. “I’m fine,” he says, and then lets his arm fall back to the support of his chair. “I’m tired, that’s all.” He shifts one leg sideways by an inch and makes a face at the action. “And sore.”

Shizuo frowns. “I thought it was supposed to make it hurt _less_.”

“It is.” Izaya shifts again, bracing his shoulders against the support of his chair as he pushes himself forward to maneuver around the wall Shizuo is making of himself in front of him. “Eventually. I’ve been in a wheelchair for _years_ , Shizuo, it’s not like I’m going to be magically cured overnight.”

“That isn’t what I meant,” Shizuo tells him as he turns to follow Izaya to the front door. “What did you do?”

“Exercises,” Izaya tells him, pushing the door open with one hand and reaching for the controls for his chair with the other. Shizuo reaches past him to catch the weight of the door with his fingertips to brace it open; Izaya lets his hand fall and rolls himself forward out onto the sidewalk without looking back. “A lot of exercises. And I have more to do at home too. It’s an absolutely _thrilling_ process, Shizu-chan, didn’t you know?”

Shizuo follows Izaya onto the sidewalk, moving fast to catch up and walk alongside him. “Are they going to help?” He looks over at Izaya; the other is watching the street instead of looking up at him, but his mouth is still soft, absent the frown Shizuo had been worried about seeing. “Are you going to be able to walk again?”

“You’re getting a little ahead of yourself, Shizu-chan,” Izaya informs him without looking up. “I’ve only just gotten out of my first session, I think I still have a ways to go before we get to that point.” He’s still looking at the sidewalk in front of him; but his forward movement is slowing, his chair is coming to a halt against the pavement. Shizuo shortens his stride in time until they’re standing still alongside each other on the sidewalk with Izaya watching the street in front of them and Shizuo watching Izaya. There’s a pause of silence, a moment of quiet going tense between them; and then: “Maybe,” so softly Shizuo can barely hear it. “Probably, they said, if I keep going regularly.”

Shizuo lets a long breath go. “That’s--” but he doesn’t have a word for it, doesn’t have a way to capture the fragile shell of hope in his chest and the ache of sympathy for the effort Izaya has exerted already, for what he has yet in front of him if he continues.

Izaya doesn’t seem to need the clarification. “Yeah,” he says. “I know.” Then he takes a breath, and huffs an exhale like he’s shaking some tension free of his shoulders, and when he moves again it’s to let his hands fall slack over the arms of his chair, to let his shoulders slump back while he tilts his chin up to meet Shizuo’s gaze.

“Lucky for you all you had to do was wait for me for a couple hours,” he drawls, his voice following the cut of his mouth as he pulls a smirk onto his face. “I’m the one who did all the work here, Shizu-chan, the least you could do is make yourself useful and take me the rest of the way home.”

Shizuo suspects Izaya intends this at least half as teasing, as insincere taunting to needle him into irritation. But he _does_ feel useless, feels strange and restless after the strain of waiting, so: “Okay,” he says, “sure” and steps back to take the handles of Izaya’s wheelchair and restart their forward motion. Izaya coughs a laugh as much startled as it is entertained, and Shizuo can feel his mouth tug on satisfaction at winning even a moment of surprise from the other. He moves them across the next street and halfway up the next block; and then Izaya says, “Thanks,” without turning around or offering any additional explanation for the statement.

Shizuo hesitates a moment, considers leaving the word unanswered; but then he takes a breath, and says “You’re welcome,” with the same clear volume Izaya used.

Izaya doesn’t speak again, but when Shizuo tips sideways to see the other’s face, he can see the curve of the other’s smile catching soft against the corners of his eyes.


	30. Illumination

Shizuo is starting to get used to waking up to his phone ringing. That’s a little worrying, or would be if he had the awareness to spare when he rolls over to reach for the buzz of his phone against the bedside table; as it is he’s barely awake enough to manage the simple task of grabbing for his phone and swiping to silence the insistent hum of the ringtone, and even when he answers he’s not even surprised enough to muster anger at being woken up from a sound sleep. “Hey.”

“We have to stop meeting like this,” Izaya says on the other end of the phone. He sounds like he’s trying for amusement, or maybe teasing, but his voice is strained enough for even Shizuo’s hazy awareness to notice, and the attempt at laughter falls somewhat flat. “It’s a miracle you haven’t crushed your cell phone out of existence yet.”

“You’re the one who keeps calling me,” Shizuo says against the soft of his pillow. He catches himself on a yawn, the force of the sound straining against his jaw, and when he recovers he feels marginally more functional. “You’re not outside my door or something, are you?”

Izaya’s laugh is painfully bright against the receiver. “No. Thanks for the idea, though, I’ll be sure to keep it in mind in the future.”

“Great,” Shizuo groans, but his mind is starting to catch up to the situation, now, working through the possible reasons for Izaya calling and finding none that are positive. “Nightmare?”

Shizuo’s expecting an affirmative, or maybe the complete silence that answers better than words would; but “No,” is what he gets, so fast and so simply that he doesn’t even think to doubt it. “I haven’t slept yet.”

“What?” Shizuo lifts his head to squint painful attention at the dim glow of the clock alongside his bed; the digits are unimportant compared to the fact that there are three of them instead of four. “ _Why_?”

“I can’t,” Izaya says. “I can’t get comfortable.”

It’s a simple statement. If Izaya were someone else Shizuo thinks he would hiss irritation at this seemingly trivial claim, would maybe hang up and shut his phone off to ensure peace before he rolled over and went back to sleep. But Izaya still sounds strained, like his voice is thrumming over some unstated tension in the back of his throat, and then Shizuo thinks of the appointment several hours ago and the explanation offers itself without him even reaching for it. “Your legs?”

“Unfortunately.” There’s a hiss of sound, the gust of a breath offered from between gritted teeth as Izaya does something on the other end of the phone; when he speaks again he sounds minimally calmer, like he’s managed to take off the edge of what sounds like pain, now that Shizuo can fit a potential explanation to the sound. “Turns out trying to use muscles for the first time in two years is a less than pleasant physical experience. Who knew.”

Shizuo snorts against the soft of the pillows under him. “Yeah, I never would have guessed.”

“Shut up,” Izaya says, but he sounds a little bit like he’s laughing, or trying to hold back amusement at the very least. “I don’t want to hear sarcasm from a protozoan like you. This is your fault anyway.”

Shizuo lets the point stand. “Can’t you ice them or something?”

“Did,” Izaya says immediately. “Will. I’m not supposed to ice for more than a half hour.”

Shizuo shifts against the mattress, pushing himself to turn over onto his back so he can talk without the pillow catching at his mouth with every word. “How long until the next one?”

“Twenty…” There’s a pause. “Three minutes.”

Shizuo huffs almost-a-laugh to the dark of his room. “Is there anything on TV?”

“Not anymore.” Izaya shifts again; Shizuo can hear the effort of the movement in the hiss of his breathing. “Everything after midnight is unwatchable.”

“Yeah.” Shizuo yawns again. “Am I really that much better to talk to?”

He means it rhetorically. The answer seems obvious to him, given the sleepy slur of his thoughts and the general incoherency of his responses. But Izaya hesitates before he speaks again, his silence giving the question weight Shizuo never intended it to have, and by the time he clears his throat Shizuo’s spine is prickling with self-consciousness at the implication the lack of answer carries.

“Tell me about Ikebukuro,” Izaya says instead of responding to the non-question. “I don’t have many contacts anymore, I don’t have any idea what’s going on.”

“I don’t think I know what you want to hear,” Shizuo tells him. “It’s not like I keep up on the yakuza or the gangs in town.”

“I don’t expect you to be a well of knowledge,” Izaya informs him. “I _have_ known you for over a decade, Shizu-chan, I’m more than aware of what kinds of circles you generally move in.” He hisses through another motion; when he speaks again his voice is rough at the topmost range, tense in the back of his throat as he forces words against the phone. “Just tell me whatever you want. Anything you want to talk about is fine.”

“Okay,” Shizuo says, willing enough to agree to this simple request; and his mind promptly goes utterly blank, all his accrued knowledge of the last two years wiped away like it never existed at all now that he’s being asked to provide it. “I don’t know what to talk about.”

“My god,” Izaya groans. “You could start with our mutual acquaintance. It’s as good a place as any.”

Shizuo frowns at the ceiling. “You mean Shinra?”

Shizuo didn’t know, before, that he could _hear_ someone rolling their eyes. “Yes, Shizu-chan, I mean Shinra.”

“He’s good,” Shizuo says, and then, before Izaya has time to protest this: “He’s living with Celty still, of course. They went on a vacation a while ago, they were gone for six months. Shinra’s still calling it their honeymoon.”

Izaya huffs amusement. “He would.”

“Everything got a little weird when they were gone,” Shizuo continues. “There’s this new group in town that started then, they call themselves Snake Hands.”

“Snake Hands?” Izaya sounds skeptical. “What, were colors not good enough for them?”

Shizuo shrugs unseen. “Celty says those kids are involved, Yahiro and his friend.”

“Who?”

“The one I told you about.” Shizuo turns over under the tangle of his blankets, fitting himself into a more comfortable position on the bed. “The one who fought me.”

“Ah.” Izaya’s voice has dipped low, shedding the teasing lilt he adopted at first. The strain of physical pain is clearly audible, now, but Shizuo doesn’t comment on it. “With the friend.”

“Yeah.” Shizuo stares into the darkness of his room without seeing the outlines of the furniture that have become familiar over the past few weeks. His mind is occupied with other images, other possibilities, flipping back through the pages of memory to find the details of high school, to relive the surge of irritation that hit him like a fire in his veins as he turned to the sound of mocking applause, to the drag of a lopsided smile.

“It wouldn’t have worked.”

Izaya’s voice is clear, startlingly loud against the backdrop of Shizuo’s slow-shifting thoughts. Shizuo blinks, startled back into the present moment by the other’s words, the haze of memory dissolving like mist before the sun. “What?”

“We couldn’t have been friends.” Izaya shifts again, hissing discomfort through the motion; Shizuo wonders if he even made it to bed or if he’s lying across his couch instead, if he’s trying to find a comfortable position against the narrow span of the cushions. “That’s what you were thinking about” as a statement instead of a question. “You hated me on sight and I was ready to needle you into it if you hadn’t. You would never have been able to hold your temper with me trying to make you lose it. Any friendship we had would have been destroyed the first time I pissed you off.”

Shizuo frowns into the dark. “Yahiro does it,” he says, a weak rebuttal to an argument he knows is accurate and can see play out in his imagination with inevitable clarity.

“Yahiro’s not you.” Izaya sounds strange, his voice tense on the other end of the line; Shizuo wonders if it’s pain, wonders if pain would make Izaya’s words drop quite so low in his throat. “And his friend’s not me.” He huffs a laugh sharp enough to chase away the odd note in his voice with familiar sharpness. “Give me _some_ credit, Shizu-chan. At least I have the good sense to not imitate someone else’s mistakes.” His voice is bitter on the last, twisting in on itself with a self-directed edge more than the laugh Shizuo thinks he’s aiming for. Shizuo doesn’t know what to say, so he stays quiet and lets the sound of Izaya’s words settle into his mind as he gazes into the shadows of his room and watches his surroundings come into clearer focus with every moment his eyes have to adjust. After a long moment Izaya takes a breath, deep and deliberate enough that Shizuo can hear it clearly over the static of the phone.

“They _were_ mistakes,” he says, enunciating every word into pinpoint precision against the phone. “I was wrong.” A pause, shorter this time. “I’m sorry, Shizuo.”

Shizuo’s spine prickles, his entire body flashing hot for a moment as if he’s been burned. There’s adrenaline lacing his veins, surging the possibility of strength into his muscles and tense against the curl of his fingers on his phone; but he doesn’t want to tighten his grip, doesn’t want to push forward into action. He holds still instead, feeling the thrum of possibility flare out into every corner of his body and hiss electricity through his thoughts; and then he opens his mouth and says “I’m sorry too,” as simply as if the words were waiting fully-formed on his tongue, in his thoughts, against the inside of his chest.

Izaya doesn’t even hesitate. His response comes fast, as if it’s been drawn out of him by the current of Shizuo’s words. “I forgive you.”

Shizuo’s breath catches in his chest. It’s as if the whole world has gone still for a moment, as if the earth itself has paused in its rotation to wait on his reply. He can feel the shape of it, can see the outline of his expected response as clearly as if it were written in front of him; but he can see the rest of it too, can feel the weight of history on his shoulders like a physical presence, like the crack and bite of those memories in his head are materializing into immediacy in the empty quiet of his hotel room. The sound of laughing, the shine of a knife, the taunting slur of laughter; bright eyes, a brighter smile, police sirens and metal bars and blood and bruises and flame and how can Shizuo forgive that, how can he push aside everything that Izaya has been and everything that he has done for the sake of a few words of sincerity now, even years later?

Izaya takes a breath. It’s nothing noteworthy; just an inhale, soft enough against the phone receiver that Shizuo almost doesn’t hear it, wouldn’t at all if he weren’t so tense-strung on his own thoughts. But he does, and that means he hears the hiss of it, hears the weight of pain under the sound as Izaya shifts against his bed, or his couch, whatever it is currently supporting his aching legs in this unfamiliar city. And Shizuo remembers that too, with more clarity that he would like: that grin stained with the red of Izaya’s own blood, the _crunch_ of bone under his fist, those dark eyes flat and lifeless even before Izaya formed his mouth around the words _do it, monster_ like the dare it was, like the _plea_ it was. And Izaya’s still alive, Izaya’s still breathing against the other end of the phone, is offering forgiveness like it’s easy, like it’s simple, even while his legs ache with the effects of Shizuo’s actions, while the specter of nightmares to come strips comfort from his sleep and leaves him to struggle through a minefield of potential panic on a daily basis. Izaya can forgive him, Izaya _has_ forgiven him, and Shizuo takes a breath, and lets it out like a sigh.

“I forgive you, Izaya.”

It’s not enough to undo the past. It won’t fix Izaya’s legs, or clear Shizuo’s memories, or grant either of them the friendship they might have had if things were different, if Izaya were someone else, if Shizuo were someone else. But Shizuo can feel his shoulders unknot as he says the words, and he can hear Izaya’s exhale shudder like a sob on the other end of the phone, and when he breathes in he can taste relief sweet on his tongue.

His room hardly looks dark at all anymore.


	31. Useful

“Are you really planning on pushing me all the way back, Shizu-chan?”

Izaya delivers the question with off-hand disinterest from the lean he has against the arm of his chair with his head braced against his hand. He’s not even looking up when Shizuo’s attention drops down to him; all the other can see of him is the dark of his hair, the color nearly a match for the shirt across Izaya’s shoulders.

Shizuo frowns confusion. “I was,” he says. “Do you have a problem with that? I took you back last time too.”

“Oh no,” Izaya says, and he does move this time, leaning against the support of the chair so he can tip his head back and flash a smile up at Shizuo. “I’m all in favor of you waiting on me, this is fun.” His eyes are dark on mockery, his mouth tight on amusement; Shizuo rolls his eyes in response and Izaya laughs and looks back down to the sidewalk in front of them. “I _can_ get myself back to my own room, though, if you have better things to do.”

There’s the hint of an offer under Izaya’s words, the possibility of an out if Shizuo wants to take it, like a door left standing open in suggestion. Shizuo considers the possibility, recognizes the option; and then he says, “I don’t mind,” and leaves it untaken. “Aren’t you tired after your sessions anyway?”

“The chair’s electric,” Izaya informs Shizuo, as if this is new information. “It takes hardly any effort to get myself back.”

Shizuo shrugs, even though Izaya’s not looking at him and doesn’t see the motion. “It’s fine. I don’t mind taking you back.”

“Suit yourself,” Izaya says, settling himself back against the chair with ostentatious ease. “If you need something to do to feel useful, far be it from me to deprive you of a purpose.”

Shizuo doesn’t answer. Izaya’s trying for a fight, he thinks, or at least the comfortable familiarity of a bantering argument; but he sounds tired, and his arms are heavy against the support of his chair in spite of his insistence on his own ability to get himself home. Shizuo is sure he _could_ , if he had to -- it’s not that much effort, and he’s seen Izaya do a lot of things Shizuo didn’t think he could in the time they’ve known each other -- but there’s no point in Shizuo staying in his empty hotel room with nothing to do when he could be helping even minimally with the slow process of Izaya’s physical therapy. And there’s another reason, lingering unspoken but clear to them both, Shizuo is sure: if Izaya can get himself to and from his appointments, there’s truly no reason at all for Shizuo to linger in the city any further. He could leave, could go back to Ikebukuro comfortable with the knowledge that Izaya is recovering, that the mess they made between them has been resolved if not erased, that he can live his life again without the spectre of their shared past haunting his dreams. But Izaya still hasn’t said he’ll come back, whether he can walk on his own or not, and Shizuo doesn’t want to ask for fear of the answer he might get, and so he continues as he has been by taking over the minimal physical exertion it takes to push Izaya to and from his sessions.

They’re both quiet for the rest of the walk back. Izaya looks less completely worn-out than he did after his first appointment, but he still seems to be willing to lapse into quiet, whether from introspection or exhaustion, Shizuo isn’t sure which. It doesn’t make a difference to Shizuo -- he knows the way to Izaya’s hotel from almost anywhere in town, now, and he’s such a regular visitor that the front desk staff don’t even look up when he and Izaya come through the front doors into the lobby. The elevator is empty, the ride to Izaya’s floor silent; it’s not until Shizuo’s turning them around the corner to the hallway that Izaya stirs at all, and then it’s only to shift in his chair so he can work his key free of his pocket.

“You always make such excellent time, Shizu-chan,” he declares as Shizuo draws them to a stop in front of Izaya’s door so the other can lean forward to unlock it. “You might be worth keeping around just for that after all.”

“Sure,” Shizuo says, but he’s not really listening; he’s watching the way Izaya grimaces at the stretch he’s making for the door handle, seeing the uncomfortable angle of his legs against each other as the lock clicks open. Shizuo reaches to push and hold the door open while Izaya moves forward without looking back at him; he pauses in the entryway to pocket his key again before leaning forward to brace the palm of one hand against his leg and press down like he’s trying to work out a knot.

“You’re officially done with your responsibilities for the day,” Izaya says without turning around to see Shizuo still standing on the far side of the entryway and holding the door open one-handed. “You’re off the hook.” He sits back upright and reaches for the wheel of his chair to pivot himself around and offer Shizuo a shadowed-over smile. “I think there might even be a movie marathon on tonight for me to watch, so you can get your beauty sleep uninterrupted.”

Shizuo doesn’t know why he asks. It would be easy to roll his eyes, to say _have fun_ , to step back down the hallway and return to his own room and the silence of his unringing phone. Maybe it’s the way Izaya’s smile looks soft, the way it has started to recently, like he’s forgetting to keep the edge honed quite as sharp as it used to be. Maybe it’s the dark behind Izaya’s eyes, resignation like a promise to keep Shizuo’s phone still and silent through the night of bad dreams to come. Maybe it’s just Izaya’s words: _if you need to feel useful_ like a threat of insignificance far more dangerous than the casual violence they used to offer to each other like the steps of some complicated dance. The reason doesn’t make a difference in the end, no more than it did when Shizuo turned to glare into the blood-stained eyes of a high schooler whose name he didn’t yet know. It was anger, then; this time it’s speech, the words “Do you want company?” fitting easy against his lips like they were meant to be there.

Izaya doesn’t even blink. He just looks at Shizuo for a moment, his gaze unflinching, his composure unwavering; and then he says, “Sure,” and pushes at the wheel of his chair to turn himself away and back into the room. “Come in and I’ll order something to eat.”

Izaya’s not looking, but Shizuo’s still smiling when the door swings shut behind him.


	32. Humidity

Shizuo ends up taking the bed. He’s not completely resigned to this idea -- it doesn’t seem fair to take the most comfortable spot in the room when it’s still Izaya’s space -- but the closer midnight draws the bigger his yawns get, until Izaya heaves a sigh from the other end of the couch where he’s lying with his legs stretched out over the space between them and says, “Get out or go to bed, Shizu-chan, you’re driving me crazy.” He refused to move himself, insisting that the support of the couch was more comfortable than the soft of the bed and that he wasn’t ready for sleep anyway, and finally exhaustion won out over resistance and Shizuo abandoned the movie reruns to collapse over the bed in the corner of the room. He strips his shirt off, keeps his slacks and undershirt on; it’s not as comfortable as he would be otherwise, between the glow of illumination and the murmur of sound from the television that Izaya makes no move to dim or mute, but Shizuo is tired enough that the neatly-made bed feels as comfortable as that still waiting for him back in his apartment in Ikebukuro. He drags the lines of the blankets out-of-order, and presses a pillow over his head to block out the light, and is asleep before he’s quite settled himself into comfort.

He wakes in the middle of the night. He thinks at first it’s because his phone is ringing, thinks at first he’s back in his hotel room; it’s disorienting to blink into focus on a too-close wall, dizzying to turn and see the faint lines of an unfamiliar ceiling overhead. Shizuo is still gazing blankly at the dark space around him when there’s a sound from the couch, a noise that catches his attention even sleep-bleary as it is, and he sits up in a rush as everything catches up with him at once: staying with Izaya through the evening, collapsing into the bed in Izaya’s hotel room some hours before, and now waking to Izaya whimpering some kind of pain against the couch.

“Izaya?” Shizuo asks, his voice oddly muffled by the silence filling the room. There’s no response, at least nothing coherent; he can hear Izaya take a shuddering breath, can hear the couch squeak as the other shifts against the support, but there’s nothing more focused than that. Shizuo blinks hard, shakes his head to clear his thoughts, and then he’s swinging his legs sideways and over the edge of the bed so he can pad across the floor to where Izaya is asleep on the couch.

He’s clearly having a nightmare. Shizuo doesn’t think he’s ever seen someone in the grip of a bad dream before, didn’t know he would be able to recognize the signs on sight, but it’s perfectly clear from the tension in Izaya’s expression, evident in the frown that has settled onto his lips and the half-curl of his fingers like he’s trying to form a fist for defense against his own unconscious. “Izaya,” Shizuo says again as he approaches, a little more loudly than before, but Izaya just shakes his head like he’s shaking off a distraction, just tightens his fingers closer against his palm. Shizuo hesitates to touch him -- he can make a guess as to the subject of Izaya’s dreams, it’s easy to imagine the worst outcome even casual contact could have -- but Izaya’s not waking, and Shizuo is reaching out anyway, his hand hovering an inch from contact with Izaya’s shoulder.

“Izaya-kun,” he says, as gently as he can. It’s strange to feel those syllables coming so soft in his throat. “Wake up.” His fingers brush fabric, ghost against the curve of Izaya’s shoulder; Izaya tenses for a moment, his expression tightening, and Shizuo grimaces but doesn’t pull away. “Izaya-kun.”

Izaya takes a breath -- it’s loud, Shizuo can hear the startled catch of it in the other’s throat -- and Shizuo pulls his touch away, drawing his hand back from Izaya’s shoulder as the other blinks his eyes open against the couch.

“Hey,” Shizuo says, aiming for the least threatening position he can manage and ready to retreat at a moment’s notice if Izaya’s expression tenses on panic. “Sorry. You looked like you were having a nightmare.”

“Yeah,” Izaya says, his voice rougher than Shizuo has ever heard it. “I was.” He blinks again, hard, like he’s trying to pull himself back into the moment; Shizuo can see the shift of his lashes in the movement, can see the dark of Izaya’s eyes coming to focus on him. There’s still tension across the other’s forehead, some lingering remnant of panic from his dream still held across his shoulders; but it’s easing even as Shizuo watches, unravelling itself as Izaya stares at him instead of winding tighter as Shizuo half-feared it would. For a moment they’re both quiet, the room silent enough that Shizuo can hear the catch of Izaya’s breathing slowing from the adrenaline-stoked rush it had and into something softer and easier in his throat; then Shizuo takes a breath and asks, “Are you okay?” in the softest tone he can muster for the dim-lit stillness of the room.

Izaya’s lashes flutter. “I will be,” he says. He’s still not looking away. His eyes look endless in the dark. “Thanks for waking me up.”

Shizuo’s heart skips in his chest, stammering over some surge of tension completely at odds with the quiet of the moment. “You’re welcome,” he says, the words dropping too-loud into the quiet, but Izaya doesn’t flinch, and doesn’t turn away. He’s still staring at Shizuo, his focus pinned to the other’s gaze as if he’s reading whole novels of information from Shizuo’s eyes, and Shizuo’s skin is prickling as if with electricity, as if there’s a summer thunderstorm forming in the space between them.

“Will you be able to sleep again?” Shizuo asks, almost whispering the words as if they carry far more weight than they actually do. His heart is pounding itself frantic in his chest, his whole body straining on some tension he can’t place; he doesn’t know why he’s having such trouble finding air, doesn’t know why the moment feels so fraught with tension, but Izaya is still staring at him, his whole expression oddly soft in a way Shizuo has never seen it before, like the night is casting Shizuo into the guise of a stranger he’s trying to get a read on.

“Maybe,” Izaya says, but he sounds distracted; Shizuo’s not sure he was even listening to the question. He takes a breath, starts a sentence: “Shizuo--” but his words cut off, the sound pressed to quiet by the darkness, by the quiet, by his own thoughts, Shizuo doesn’t know the cause and can’t even make a guess when his whole body is thrumming with that strange lingering friction in the air. Izaya sighs an exhale, blinks slow; and then his gaze slides down from Shizuo’s eyes, and lands at his mouth, and Shizuo can taste ozone on his tongue, can breathe heat into his lungs like he’s become a lightning rod to call all the energy of the sky down into himself.

Izaya moves slowly. Shizuo has plenty of time to pull away, if he wanted, plenty of time to turn his head and break away from the strange force of Izaya’s eyes on him. But he doesn’t turn his head, and doesn’t get to his feet, and he doesn’t say anything at all; he just hold perfectly, utterly still as Izaya turns sideways on the couch, and pushes himself up onto an elbow, and reaches out for him. His fingers are feather-light in Shizuo’s hair, glancing over the strands like rain, like mist condensing to droplets out of humid-heavy air; Shizuo can hear the breath Izaya takes as his skin brushes against the back of Shizuo’s neck, as his thumb fits behind Shizuo’s ear. His fingers tighten, his hand tensing into a warning, and Shizuo obeys the unspoken request and doesn’t move at all, either to reject or encourage as Izaya leans in closer towards him.

Their foreheads bump together, first, dark hair catching and tangling with light, and this is familiar, in a distant, dizzy way. Shizuo can remember being this close to Izaya before, can remember the way his smile looked from this close up, the way his eyes looked ink-black in the shadow of Shizuo’s own body. But the storm was different, then, it was the destruction of a hurricane instead of this tension rising higher and higher until Shizuo’s chest is aching with it, until he can barely catch his breath for how taut all his muscles are holding him. It’s like all his strength is trying to crush him where he sits, like it’s tensing to press him right out of existence; but Izaya is still holding onto him, and Izaya is still leaning in closer, and then there’s a ghosting contact, a drag of friction feather-light against Shizuo’s mouth, and he has the brief, clear thought of _he’s kissing me_ a moment before Izaya leans in to fit himself closer.

Shizuo’s thoughts are strangely clear. There’s nothing for him to do, nothing mutual about this at all; this is Izaya’s mouth on his, Izaya fitting his lips to Shizuo’s half-parted ones, Izaya’s hand still pressing painfully hard at Shizuo’s neck like a warning, like a threat. Shizuo thinks this might be what it would be like to be kissed while asleep, while caught in the grip of a dream: his mouth soft, unresisting, entirely pliant to the press of Izaya’s lips against him. Izaya is breathing harder, Shizuo can feel it against his mouth, can catch the heat of the other’s exhales against his tongue if he thinks of it; and then Izaya’s fingers tense, and his hand eases, and Shizuo can feel the unspoken permission like that much-delayed lightning strike finally grounding to a blaze in the air, like fire in his blood and smoke in his lungs and flame in his thoughts. His eyes shut, his lips part, and when he turns his head his mouth slides into place against Izaya’s like it was meant to be there, like the shape of their lips were always just waiting to form to the other’s. Shizuo leans in closer, lifts a hand to ghost against Izaya’s hair; and Izaya makes a sound, a note so low against Shizuo’s lips that Shizuo is drawing back in a rush before he parses it as the moan it is rather than the whimper he feared.

“Sorry--” he blurts, the word too close on his tongue to snatch back even as he realizes it’s unnecessary, but Izaya gestures hard with his hand, a sweep of motion clear as a shout demanding silence. He’s not looking at Shizuo anymore; his eyes are half-lidded to shadow, his gaze visibly unfocused even when Shizuo looks for it. His mouth is soft -- Shizuo knows how soft, now, can feel the awareness of it crystal-clear in the heat clinging to his veins -- and Shizuo can see the rush of Izaya’s breathing coming faster than it should, faster than any of their actions called for. Izaya’s lashes flutter shut for a moment, his tongue slides across his lips like he’s catching heat off them, and Shizuo’s stomach drops in a rush, like delayed-reaction adrenaline is catching up with him and stealing the breath from his lungs. He makes a faint noise in the back of his throat, a whimper of heat he has no hope of holding back, but Izaya doesn’t look at him; he’s lifting a hand instead, covering the shape of his mouth as he takes a breath with enough effort to turn it audible in his throat.

“I’m going to sleep,” he says, without looking up and without moving his hand. His voice sounds strange, tense in the back of his throat and shuddering over his lips; or maybe it’s the echo of Shizuo’s heartbeat pounding in his ears that is turning Izaya’s voice so odd, maybe it’s his own hearing that is finally giving way to the force of adrenaline. Izaya shifts his bracing elbow and turns to let himself fall back to the couch, but he doesn’t lift his fingers from his mouth; they’re sliding down, now, his fingertips catching against his lips and dragging over the shape of them like he’s trying to memorize their curve. Shizuo’s attention trails the movement, caught helplessly by the angle of Izaya’s fingers and the give of his mouth under the pressure, and something in his chest aches, the tension of that electricity starting to form again as if it was never released at all. He wants to reach out, wants to urge Izaya’s fingers away and lean in himself, wants to, wants-- but Izaya isn’t looking at him, and isn’t reaching for him, and so Shizuo swallows, and looks away, and pushes to his feet instead.

“Goodnight,” he says, his voice rougher than he expected, dragging into a rumble in the back of his throat he didn’t intend. Izaya’s eyelashes flutter, his breathing catches, but when Shizuo looks back Izaya’s still not looking at him; he has his gaze fixed on the far side of the room instead as if the edge of the wall meeting the ceiling is of far more interest than Shizuo himself. “Sleep well.” And he makes himself move away, pushing himself through the strides to cross the room so he can retreat to the tangle of the blankets he left behind him. They’re cold when he gets there, the warmth of his sleeping form lost to the air; or maybe it’s just in comparison that they feel so cool, maybe it’s just that Shizuo is still burning with the heat of Izaya’s mouth pressing with such painful care against his. He doesn’t know, he can’t answer; so he lies down instead, relinquishing his view of the couch to stare sleepless at the ceiling instead, to feel his lips glowing warm with the friction-heat Izaya left there.

He’s sure neither of them will get much more sleep that night.


	33. Destination

“You need to push harder,” Izaya orders, his voice sharp-edged on tension and pain alike. “You’re being too careful, Shizu-chan.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Shizuo protests, trying to increase the pressure he’s putting on Izaya’s foot incrementally.

“You’re worrying too much,” Izaya tells him, still with that edge on his voice that comes with the beginnings of pain. He’s not looking at Shizuo at all; he has his gaze fixed on the ceiling, his jaw set hard against whatever pain the therapist-ordered exercises are causing him. “I told you, it’s not meant to be a particularly pleasant process.”

“It’s different when you’re with the therapist,” Shizuo tells him. Izaya braces himself against the floor, tensing his leg to push hard against the resistance of Shizuo’s hold; it doesn’t feel like much force to Shizuo, but then he’s not sure he would notice even if it was. “I don’t know what I’m doing, I could end up making things worse.”

“You can’t make things any worse than you already did once,” Izaya says. Shizuo frowns at the reminder, but when Izaya glances at him he’s smirking, his mouth tugging up into a smile that Shizuo can feel ease the tension out of his shoulders. “Come on, Shizu-chan, can’t you take a joke?”

“That’s not funny,” Shizuo tells him. He pushes a little harder against Izaya’s foot to angle the other’s leg farther back; Izaya makes a face but doesn’t protest the stretch, even if his smile is going a little tense at the corners. “I can’t believe you’re joking about that.”

“It’s the only way to deal with it,” Izaya informs him. “I could be guilt tripping you about it instead, would you prefer that?”

“Of course not.” Izaya grimaces and reaches up towards Shizuo’s wrist; Shizuo lets the force of his push go and Izaya shifts his foot down to set flat on the floor instead. “Is that it?”

“For today.” Izaya sighs and pushes himself up off the floor; Shizuo reaches out to offer a hand to pull him up, but Izaya is sitting up almost before Shizuo has extended the offer, and he lets his hand fall again. “More exciting adventures in physical therapy await tomorrow, as ever.” He braces a hand under his knee to support the weight of his leg as he lowers it to the floor, hissing through the effort of the movement before he has both legs stretched out in front of him and some of the tension of effort fades from his face.

“How long do you have to do this?” Shizuo asks without looking away from Izaya’s face. Izaya’s looking at his legs instead of at Shizuo -- they’ve barely made eye contact at all since their interlude last night, even though Shizuo’s been in Izaya’s hotel room all morning -- but Shizuo can still see the relief in Izaya’s expression, can see the damp of sweat clinging against the other’s hairline and how soft his mouth has gone as he catches his breath.

“A while,” Izaya says without lifting his head. “The therapy sessions at the office are harder, but I’ll probably need to keep doing these for a while even after those are over.” He shifts his weight, pushing up from the support of his hands behind him so he can lean forward instead to bend his knees and draw his legs in towards himself instead of straight in front of him. “It should get easier, they said.”

“Does it hurt?” Shizuo asks, and gets himself a glance of attention from under dark hair. He can only hold Izaya’s gaze for a moment before he looks down and away to the angle of the other’s legs in front of him. “Moving like that, I mean.”

“It used to.” Izaya ducks his head and draws one foot in closer to himself. “Not really anymore. It feels like a stretch but it’s not pain, usually.”

“That’s good,” Shizuo says, but he’s distracted again, he’s watching the shift of Izaya’s lashes and the part of his lips instead of listening to the sharp-edged cadence of his speech. “That’s improvement, right?”

Izaya’s mouth drags into a smile he doesn’t look up to share. “Right.” His fingers catch against his ankle, curl into an idle hold around the sharp edge of bone under the skin. “Don’t get any exciting ideas about me being much of an opponent in a chase or anything yet.”

Shizuo huffs a laugh so minimal it’s more an exhale than it is clear amusement. “I don’t really need to chase you anymore anyway.”

He means it off-hand. There’s the purr of laughter still in his chest, simple contentment glowing warm into his veins to make the response simple, to make the words come easy to his lips. But Izaya’s head comes up, his eyes fixing on Shizuo’s features, and Shizuo can see the double meaning of his words reflected in the color of Izaya’s eyes, can feel the weight of them printed in the part of Izaya’s lips.

Shizuo takes a breath, feels the heat of the air spark electricity into his chest. “Izaya-kun…”

“You’re right,” Izaya says, clearly enough that his words stop whatever unformed thought was struggling in Shizuo’s throat to silence. “I’m not running.”

It takes Shizuo a moment to catch Izaya’s meaning. His heart is pounding hard in his chest, his whole body prickling with anticipation of something he can’t frame; but Izaya’s staring at him with nothing but focus in his eyes, like Shizuo’s the only thing he’s seeing in all the world, and that should be surprising but it feels familiar instead. It feels like the way he used to look, the attention taut all through his body stripped of the promise of violence it used to carry but recognizable all the same, like the shadows Shizuo used to think were all there was to Izaya’s stare have fallen away to leave shades of color he never knew were there at all.

And then he catches up.

He moves slowly. It takes him a minute to shift himself up over his knees, another to slide forward to cross the gap between his body and Izaya’s. There’s plenty of time for Izaya to move back, to voice a protest, even to look away in the unspoken rejection that Shizuo would obey as certainly as a push. But Izaya doesn’t move, barely breathes; the only sound he makes is when Shizuo braces a hand at the floor so he can lean in closer, and even then it’s just to take a breath that hisses itself to heat on the back of his tongue. Shizuo’s heart is pounding, his spine crackling electricity; but his hand when he reaches out for Izaya’s shoulder is steady, his touch as breathlessly gentle as he can make it against the other’s shirt. Izaya tenses almost imperceptibly, his shoulders flexing under the barely-there weight of Shizuo’s touch; but he doesn’t pull away, and he’s still watching Shizuo come closer, and then Shizuo has to look away from Izaya’s eyes to his mouth instead. His hand settles against Izaya’s shoulder, his fingers falling against the other’s shirt to read potential panic from the shift of the other’s body under his hold; but Izaya’s not shaking, he’s not retreating, he’s just holding perfectly still, as still as Shizuo was last night. Shizuo wonders briefly, as he leans in, if Izaya is going to be as unresponsive as his touch urged Shizuo to be yesterday, if he is going to receive instead of respond; but then Shizuo’s mouth fits against Izaya’s, and Izaya makes a sound far in the back of his throat, and any concern Shizuo had on the matter evaporates as Izaya reaches up to curl a hand around the back of his neck. Izaya’s mouth is soft against his, is pressing back to match every shift Shizuo makes, and he has his other hand up now too, is threading his fingers into Shizuo’s hair like he’s framing the other’s head between his hands, like he thinks Shizuo might pull away from the weight of his mouth if he weren’t holding him still. The idea is absurd, even in the moment Shizuo thinks it, but then he’s moving too, his hand is drifting up the line of Izaya’s shoulder like he’s following the seam running along the fabric to the edge of the other’s collar, and then his fingers skim across bare skin and Izaya groans against his mouth, his lips parting into an invitation too clear for Shizuo to mistake. He moves reflexively, bracing his hand against Izaya’s neck and leaning in hard to lick past the warmth of the other’s lips before he can think; but Izaya’s not tensing, Izaya’s not pushing him away, he’s pulling him closer, he’s meeting Shizuo move-for-move, tightening his fingers into Shizuo’s hair and catching his tongue against Shizuo’s as they shift, and Shizuo gives his worry over to lose himself in the soft of Izaya’s hair under his fingers and the taste of Izaya hot on his tongue.

He hadn’t realized this is what he was chasing all along.


	34. Potential

Izaya doesn’t answer his door when Shizuo knocks. This isn’t that startling in and of itself; except that Izaya called a half hour ago asking Shizuo to come over with an odd, strained tone to his voice, and that since the night Shizuo spent sleeping in Izaya’s room instead of his own the other has taken to leaving his door unlocked rather than letting Shizuo in himself when the other comes over. But the door’s locked, when Shizuo tries it after knocking to no response, and when he frowns it’s with the beginnings of rising concern more than with irritation.

“Izaya?” he calls, offering the other’s name in advance of a second attempt at knocking. “It’s Shizuo. Are you alright?”

There’s a pause, a moment of quiet thorough enough to prickle another surge of concern down Shizuo’s spine; but then: “ _Hang on_ ,” faint through the barrier of the door but still recognizably Izaya’s voice. “ _Give me a minute_.”

Shizuo does. Shizuo gives Izaya multiple minutes, in fact; by the time there’s the sound of movement on the other side of the door it’s been almost five, and Shizuo can feel his forehead creasing into worry in spite of Izaya’s response. He can’t imagine what’s taking so long, can’t even make a guess at what Izaya’s doing on the other side of the door that had to wait until he arrived, and he’s opening his mouth to demand an explanation as the handle to the room turns and the weight of the door swings open.

“What are you…” Shizuo starts to say, frowning hard as he sees Izaya. And then he stops talking, because he _sees_ Izaya: in front of him, holding hard against the handle of the door, face white and shoulders tense and taller than Shizuo remembers him being, taller than he has been for weeks, because Izaya’s _standing_ , shaky and pale and breathing hard with the effort but standing in front of Shizuo like he hasn’t done for years.

All Shizuo’s breath rushes out of him at once. “Holy shit,” he breathes, startled out of irritation and coherency both by the shock of Izaya on his feet in front of him.

Izaya lifts his chin to meet Shizuo’s stare. His expression is tense, his eyes tight at the corners on strain; but he’s smiling, his grin is spreading all over his face like he can’t hold it back, bright like sunshine on the cold of a winter morning.

“Hello,” he says, the one word spilling into almost a laugh around the tension of delight at his mouth. “Sorry for the wait.” His balance wobbles, the support of one leg starts to give way from under him, and Shizuo reaches out without hesitating to grab at Izaya’s elbow and brace him upright. Izaya clutches at Shizuo’s arm, leaning heavily against the support the other offers, and Shizuo steps in closer, over the threshold of the room and nearer so he can catch Izaya if the other starts to fall entirely. Izaya lets the handle of the door go, reaching out for Shizuo’s other arm instead; Shizuo catches the door with his foot, lifts his free hand to hover at Izaya’s waist in case he needs the support, but Izaya seems to have caught his balance again and is taking some of his own weight back again. “It took longer to get to the door than I expected.”

Shizuo glances across the room. Izaya’s wheelchair is still by the couch, the empty frame of it speaking to the uninterrupted distance between the support it offers and where they are now by the door. “Your room’s too big.”

Izaya’s laugh is sharp and as bright as his smile. “Yeah,” he says. His fingers tighten against Shizuo’s arms, his head comes forward to weight at Shizuo’s shoulder. “You might have a point there.”

“I can’t believe this.” Shizuo takes a step forward, carefully urging Izaya back as he moves out of the line of the doorway so he can let the door swing shut. “You walked to the door from the couch?”

“Yeah,” Izaya says against the front of his shirt. He sounds winded, like he’s trying to fit extra inhales of air between the words of his sentence. “I wanted to do something impressive.”

“I’m impressed,” Shizuo says immediately. His throat is oddly tight, his eyes burn when he blinks; he can’t stop smiling as he looks at the distance over the floor Izaya walked across.

Izaya laughs against Shizuo’s shoulder, the sound the simplest delight Shizuo has ever heard from the other, and then he lifts his head and he’s _glowing_ with it, his whole expression flushed warm and bright with self-conscious pride. He’s still smiling, that strange soft one that looks so entirely unlike him, and his eyes are bright with illumination, and he looks _human_ , looks bright and warm and happy in a way that takes Shizuo’s breath away. He’s never seen Izaya look like this, not in those moments of terrified vulnerability across a cafe table or the width of a hotel room, not on his couch with the dim of night to turn his features sharp-edged and ethereal, not even in those occasional spans of time spent throwing verbal attacks while sharing lunch and tea over Shizuo’s couch, those periods that feel uncannily close to friendship. This is something different, something even Shizuo’s shifting perspective hasn’t made any room for, with the edge of Izaya’s smile worn away to nothing and the calculation behind his eyes stalled to absence. Shizuo is staring, his own tight-chested happiness melted away to pure shock, and then Izaya says “Shizuo?” with an odd tremor on the word, and Shizuo blinks and realizes he’s not smiling anymore. He doesn’t know what face he’s making, has no idea what expression is behind his eyes, but Izaya’s smile is fading too, the momentary surge of excitement giving way to the start of worry behind his gaze. It’s like watching a wall come down, like seeing a door start to swing shut, and Shizuo has the sudden idea that he’ll never see that softness in Izaya’s face again if he lets that shadow settle into place, that he’ll never again have a chance to chase it down again.

“Izaya,” he says, and he means to say more but he’s interrupting himself with movement, leaning in over the distance still left between the two of them to press his mouth to Izaya’s. Izaya makes a startled noise, stumbling back by one unsteady step; but he doesn’t let his hold on Shizuo go, and Shizuo doesn’t pull away, and after a moment the tension under Shizuo’s lips eases as Izaya collects himself back into the moment. Izaya turns his head, lets his mouth go softer against Shizuo’s, and Shizuo can feel the warmth of the friction spreading out into his veins, overriding the complexities in his head with simple, unthinking appreciation. Izaya’s lips are soft against his, Shizuo can taste a trace of salt and the lingering bitter of coffee against the other’s mouth, and Izaya undoes his half-formed retreat to take a step closer instead, until they’re so near Izaya’s all but leaning against the support of Shizuo’s chest, until Shizuo can feel the shift of Izaya’s breathing against him. He wonders if he could feel the other’s heartbeat, if he paid attention, wonders if Izaya’s heart is beating as fast as his is; and then Izaya draws back for a moment to catch a breath of air and the rest of Shizuo’s cut-off sentence falls from his lips without any intention at all.

“Come back to Ikebukuro with me.”

Izaya stalls halfway to another kiss, his mouth almost against Shizuo’s for a moment. Shizuo can hear the hiss of breath the other takes, can feel the rush of air against his lips in the moment before Izaya draws back and away by inches. Shizuo feels the loss of Izaya against him like a chill, like the repercussions of a mistake expressing themselves physically to match the shiver in his thoughts; Izaya’s still close enough to touch, still near enough that Shizuo could reach out and fit an arm around his shoulders to pull him back in, if he wanted to do so by force. Shizuo doesn’t. He stands still, space between every part of them except that necessary hold Izaya has on his arms for support, and stares into the wall of shadow Izaya’s made of his expression.

“Please,” he says, and his voice is shaking, his throat unsteady on the sound until it comes out dipping lower into sincerity than he had intended. “Come home with me.”

Izaya stares at him for a long span of moments. His eyes are unreadable, his expression blank; Shizuo can’t tell if it’s consideration going on in his head or rejection, if Izaya’s about to lean into the acceptance of another kiss or push him back towards the door in complete negation of the request. Shizuo can feel his pulse racing in his throat, can feel that same sense of electricity taut in the air, except this time he’s the one who called the thunderstorm down, he’s the one who brought the tension into the space where there was none.

Finally Izaya moves. His hands drop from Shizuo’s arms, he takes a shaky step backwards; Shizuo’s stomach drops, his whole body going cold in anticipation of complete refusal. But Izaya doesn’t tell Shizuo to leave, and doesn’t push him towards the door; he just turns away, taking slow, deliberate steps in the direction of the couch. Shizuo is left standing by the door, uncertain as to his continued welcome during the whole span of time it takes Izaya to work his way back to the support the furniture offers; it’s not until Izaya has reached out to catch his weight at the frame of the couch that he looks back, and even then it’s only for a glance over his shoulder that barely gives Shizuo enough time to parse the dark of the other’s eyes before he’s looking away again.

“Are you planning to stand there all day?” Izaya maneuvers himself around the edge of the couch, still leaning hard against the support under his hand; Shizuo can see relief in the boneless slump he takes against the cushions as he drops to sit, can see exhaustion in the way his head tips against the back. “Or do you want to come over here and save me the trouble of shouting at you?”

Shizuo has to take a moment to collect himself enough to toe his shoes off in the entryway before crossing the space of the room. Izaya doesn’t turn around to watch him approach, but as Shizuo comes around the corner of the couch Izaya looks up to watch him through the fall of his hair, his eyes as endlessly dark as they have ever been. Shizuo sits down on the other side, leaving enough space between them for the nonexistent possibility of another person; and Izaya shifts closer, tipping sideways over the support behind him until his shoulder is just bumping Shizuo’s.

It’s not an answer anymore than his silence to Shizuo’s question was, but Shizuo doesn’t push for more. It’s enough to have the possibility of agreement still fluttering in the rhythm of his heartbeat.


	35. Unbroken

“This isn’t one of the usual places,” Shizuo observes as the taxi draws to a halt alongside an unfamiliar curb. “Where are we going?”

“There’re more than two coffee shops in the city, Shizu-chan.” Izaya leans forward to offer payment to the driver, along with a smile and a waving refusal for the offer of change. “Have you really done nothing except follow my lead since you arrived?”

Shizuo rolls his eyes. “Shut up,” he says, and pushes his door open to the sound of Izaya’s sharp-edged laugh forming from the quiet. He’s on the side of traffic, has to take a moment before he can emerge from the backseat of the car and come around to Izaya’s side; by the time he has Izaya has his door open and is struggling to stand.

“This wasn’t a good idea,” Shizuo tells him, stepping closer to catch Izaya’s elbow and brace him as he straightens out of the car and takes a step with the support of the door to hold himself upright. “We could have just taken your chair with us, it would have been easier.”

“Easy’s not the point, Shizu-chan.” Izaya takes a step forward with enough force to underline the determination of his words and pushes to swing the taxi door shut before he tosses his hair back to look up at Shizuo. “I’m supposed to challenge my limits, after all.”

“That’s not the same as overdoing it,” Shizuo tells him without easing his hold on Izaya’s arm. “We’re still going to have to get you back after this.”

“And I’ll be sitting for most of the time,” Izaya says, as airily dismissive of Shizuo’s concern as if he weren’t in the middle of leaning hard against the support the other is offering him. “Stop trying to mother me, Shizu-chan.” He braces both hands at Shizuo’s arm, his fingers digging in so tight Shizuo can feel the ache of bruises starting under the force before Izaya lets one hand go and reaches up to grab at Shizuo’s shoulder instead. “You’d be more help if you keep your mouth shut.”

Shizuo frowns and opens his mouth to give some protest to this statement; but then Izaya’s hand slides sideways and around his shoulders, the other’s arm falls heavy around his neck, and whatever protest he was going to give slides away as his attention evaporates at the distraction of Izaya leaning against him. It’s not that he’s much of a burden -- Izaya doesn’t weigh much in the first place, and Shizuo’s much-abused body is more than capable of bearing whatever force Izaya can exert upon it -- but his arm is distractingly warm, the drape of his hand over Shizuo’s shoulder startlingly casual even with the last few weeks of experience to go on. Shizuo can feel the texture of Izaya’s sleeve catch against his hair, can feel the line of Izaya’s body pressed hard against his; and then Izaya says “Let’s go” with so much self-assurance Shizuo wouldn’t hear the quiver under his voice if he couldn’t feel how tense Izaya is all along his spine and across the tilt of his shoulders. Shizuo takes a breath, blinks hard against the distractions of the moment, and then he shifts his arm to loop around Izaya’s waist, to offer the support of his touch for their movement as he takes a step forward. He can hear Izaya take a breath at the contact, can feel the shudder of adrenaline that runs through him; but Izaya’s leaning hard against the support before Shizuo can even think of pulling away, and then they’re moving forward, their steps falling arrhythmic and stuttering before Shizuo shortens and slows his enough to match Izaya’s. They move at a crawl, even with the support Shizuo is offering, and by the time they’re through the front door of the cafe Shizuo can hear how hard Izaya’s breathing is coming on effort; but they’re moving, they’re walking together out in the open air of the city, and that awareness twists some strange pressure against the inside of Shizuo’s chest until it’s hard even to breathe for the weight of it.

Izaya doesn’t head for the front counter. He takes them sideways instead, shuffling towards one of the empty tables near the front of the shop, and when he reaches out for the support of the surface Shizuo can hear the sigh of relief he gives as the table takes what of his weight Shizuo isn’t. Izaya lets his arm slide off Shizuo’s shoulders and drops into the chair next to the table in the same movement, and Shizuo doesn’t even hesitate before returning to the front to order drinks for the both of them.

Izaya’s breathing more easily by the time Shizuo returns; he has a little more color in his face and a little less tension across his arms. He’s leaning back in his chair instead of hunched in over the table, gazing out the frosted glass that forms the windows of the cafe; he looks up as Shizuo comes back, flashing a smile sharp enough to replace the blades Shizuo hasn’t seen in years.

“I’m not going to admit you were right,” he says as he reaches up to carefully take the weight of the cup Shizuo is offering from the other’s hands. “Just so you know.”

“I’d be worried if you did,” Shizuo tells him. He pushes back the chair on the other side of the table with a foot and moves to sit down with his own cup of hot chocolate. Izaya is toying with his cup, angling his fingers into a bracing weight against the side of the ceramic; Shizuo can see the detail of blue veins running alongside the other’s knuckles, can see the same delicacy he used to see around the handle of a knife in the shift of Izaya’s touch now. It’s distracting, the movement enough to pull and hold his attention; it’s not until Izaya finally curls his palm around the side of the cup and lifts it to his mouth for a sip that Shizuo blinks himself back into the present moment. Izaya’s lashes flutter as he swallows, his expression easing into satisfaction; it makes Shizuo smile even before he’s brought his own cup to his mouth to try a sip of his own drink.

“Is it that good?” he asks, cradling the warmth of his cup between both hands.

“Mm.” Izaya shifts in his chair, leaning a little farther back as he kicks a leg out in front of him. The movement takes up Shizuo’s footspace but Shizuo doesn’t complain, just turns himself sideways so he can stretch his legs out alongside the table instead of under it. “It is.”

“Why haven’t we come here before?” Shizuo wants to know. “I thought you just really liked those other two places or something.”

Izaya looks up from the dark surface of the liquid in his cup to meet Shizuo’s gaze. His eyes are very dark, his mouth damp with the coffee he’s been drinking; Shizuo’s attention flickers down to the curve of his lower lip and lingers there for a moment before Izaya’s mouth drags into a grin and startles Shizuo’s attention up and away again.

“It’s hard to maneuver in here,” Izaya says rather than commenting on Shizuo’s momentary distraction. “Hadn’t you noticed?”

Shizuo looks around. It’s true that the tables are far closer than they were at both of the other coffee shops, that the door is tucked into the far corner by a high counter; he hadn’t even considered it when they came in, had been too distracted by his focus on getting Izaya to a chair to look around. “Oh.”

“It’s exceptionally difficult to manage in a wheelchair,” Izaya tells him, shifting to weight his elbows against the table so he can lean forward over the distance. His hair falls into his face again and casting shifting shadows across his features. “It was simpler to go to one of the other options, before.”

“Oh.” Shizuo watches the shift of Izaya’s wrist as he lifts his coffee to his mouth for another sip. “Sorry.”

Izaya’s gaze swings up to meet Shizuo’s. “What are you sorry for?” he asks, his voice skipping into the high range of true amusement as his mouth goes sharp with a grin. “It’s not like you designed the layout.” He tips his head to the side to let his hair fall away from his face as he smiles almost-a-threat up at Shizuo. “If anything you’re the one who let me come here at all. I don’t think I ever would have gone to therapy without you dragging me there.”

Shizuo huffs incoherent protest. “I didn’t _drag_ you.”

Izaya raises an eyebrow and his shoulder at once, skepticism and dismissal joining forces to oppose Shizuo’s claim. “Suit yourself,” he says. “You _did_ get me to go. And brought me here, and helped me through the door like a real gentlemen.” He’s smiling bright, now, the expression glowing sharp all over his face. “Who would have guessed this from our first meeting?”

Shizuo coughs a laugh. “No one sane.”

Izaya’s smile cracks wider. “True enough,” he allows, and ducks his head towards his coffee again. He brings the mug to his lips, hesitates just before taking another mouthful. “Pretty soon I’ll be able to come here all on my own, if I feel like it.”

Shizuo can feel the cold run down his spine like an unseasonable chill has found its way into the air around them. Izaya has tipped his head back for another long swallow of coffee; the motion leaves Shizuo to stare at him through the first rush of unpleasant weight settling into his thoughts, through the first knot of tension closing hard around his heart. He’s frowning by the time Izaya sets his cup back down, but Izaya doesn’t look up right away; he’s watching his cup instead, carefully turning it until the handle is perfectly lined up between the two of them, as if to match the wall he’s formed with his words.

“I don’t mind coming with you,” Shizuo says, finally, when it becomes clear Izaya’s not planning to look up to grant him the clarity of eye contact.

“Sure,” Izaya says, his tone as deliberately off-hand as if he’s an actor on a stage. “While you’re around.” He touches his fingers to the handle of the cup, trails against the curve of it as if he’s appreciating the familiar shape. “After you’ve gone back to Ikebukuro I’ll need to get used to finding my own way again.”

Shizuo can feel a knot in his throat, can piece apart the too-clear rejection on those words. “You don’t have to,” he says. He can hear his voice grating in the back of his throat, can feel the edge of frustration on it rumbling like a growl against the inside of his chest. “You could come with me.”

“You keep saying that,” Izaya says without looking up from his cup. His fingers are still braced against the handle, his knuckles forming sharp angles of strain under his skin. “I told you already, I forgive you. You don’t have to take me home with you out of some misplaced sense of atonement.”

Shizuo blinks. “What?” He’s frowning harder, now, his lips dragging down at the corners like they’re seeking out the earth, like gravity has caught hard at the edge of his mouth. “That’s not what it’s about.”

“You sure?” Izaya asks. He makes it sound like a laugh, makes it sound like amusement, but his smile is as sharp as the angle of his fingers and Shizuo still can’t see his eyes. “You don’t want to set me up back in Ikebukuro so we can both pretend things are the same as they always were?”

“ _No_ ,” Shizuo says, and that’s a little too rough, he’s flinching at the harshness of his voice even as he speaks, but Izaya is looking up at him instead of cringing away, his eyes dark and unreadable even now that Shizuo can see them.

“No,” Shizuo says again, a little more gently and without looking away. “I don’t want things to be the way they were.”

Izaya’s eyebrow goes up. “Don’t you?” he asks. “Whatever happened to your sense of nostalgia, Shizu-chan?”

“The way things were was _horrible_ ,” Shizuo tells him, feeling the words come easy on sincerity against his tongue. “I hated it then, I don’t want to go back to that now.”

“That’s good,” Izaya says, his voice flat enough to strip off any honesty that might have come with the words. “I don’t think I could put up much resistance in a fight with you nowadays.”

“I don’t want to fight you,” Shizuo says, and he reaches out over the table without hesitating, without thinking at all. His fingers land against Izaya’s wrist, his hand heavy and clumsy with force as he tries to ease it into a gentle touch; Izaya’s attention drops instantly, his eyes going wider as he looks at Shizuo’s fingers like he’s never seen them before, but he doesn’t snatch his hand away, and that’s something like permission in itself.

“I want you to come back with me,” Shizuo says. His fingers shift, his touch drags over the tension in Izaya’s wrist, and his hold settles around the other’s arm, his grip as gentle as he can make it while still making his point clear. “Like you are now.”

Izaya doesn’t look up. He’s staring at Shizuo’s hand against his wrist, his whole expression unreadable behind the shadows over it; Shizuo can see the effort in his swallow, can see the crease that settles into his forehead as he speaks.

“I’m _broken_ ,” he says, the word slipping over the precipice of his fragile control to shatter into emotion against his tongue. “I’m not like I was.”

“You’re _different_ ,” Shizuo says. “It’s okay.” He shifts his thumb against Izaya’s skin, lets the weight of it slide around and under the other’s wrist into an actual hold; Izaya takes a breath but doesn’t look away, and doesn’t lift his hand to pull it free. “Changing isn’t the same thing as breaking.”

Izaya’s forehead creases, his mouth goes tense. For a moment Shizuo can see the weight of a frown at the corner of Izaya’s lips, can see Izaya shut his eyes hard like he’s trying to hold off some sudden surge of emotion. It lasts for a moment, the strain of self-control clear all across the other’s features; then Izaya exhales like he’s undoing some knot in his chest, and lets the handle of his coffee cup go as he reaches for it with his other hand. There’s still some trace of tension at the corners of his eyes when he takes another mouthful of coffee, still the faint suggestion of a tremor along his wrist as he lifts the cup to his mouth, but Shizuo only watches for a moment before he looks away and down to Izaya’s other hand lying still and unresisting to the hold Shizuo still has on his wrist.

It’s not quite encouragement, exactly. Izaya doesn’t turn his hand up for more contact, and even as it is Shizuo can feel the tension against the whole line of the other’s arm. But he doesn’t pull away from Shizuo’s touch, and Shizuo doesn’t lift his fingers free, even when he reaches to take another sip of his own drink.

Izaya’s heartbeat is clear under his thumb.


	36. Helpful

Izaya has been quiet.

He usually is after his therapy sessions. That much Shizuo has become accustomed to; it’s more often than not that they’ll travel the whole way back to Izaya’s hotel room without speaking, with nothing but the rattle of Izaya’s wheelchair over the bumps in the sidewalk to accompany the sound of Shizuo’s footsteps. But even the process of transferring Izaya from his wheelchair to standing upright as they get off the elevator and turn the corner to the hallway of his room is done without speaking, today; Izaya leans forward, and Shizuo stops walking, and when Izaya starts to push himself to his feet Shizuo catches at his elbow to steady his balance. He hardly needs the support at all anymore; the first time he did this Shizuo was holding to his arm the whole way down the hall, bearing half Izaya’s weight while still trying to push the wheelchair one-handed as well. But now he’s balanced almost as soon as Shizuo touches him, and when he steps forward and away from the other’s support there’s nothing left for Shizuo to do but to return his grip to the handles of the wheelchair and continue pushing the far lighter burden of the empty chair in Izaya’s wake. Even entering the room is done in silence; Izaya leaves the door open in his wake, braces himself at the wall as he lowers himself to sit so he can untie his shoes and work them off, and Shizuo is left to set the wheelchair aside next to the entryway, where it stays most of the time now, and push the door shut before toeing his own shoes off. Izaya’s just finishing when Shizuo looks back to him, is reaching for the edge of the table to pull himself back to his feet; Shizuo steps in closer to offer a hand, and Izaya takes it without hesitating, lets Shizuo tug him back to upright and holds on for another second while he recenters his balance. Even then he stays quiet, only leaning on Shizuo’s support for a handful of breaths before he lets go and turns away to make his careful way to the couch. Shizuo is left standing in the entryway to frown at Izaya’s shoulders, his spine prickling discomfort at the unusual lack of even teasing from the other.

“Do you need anything?” he asks, finally, as Izaya is settling himself to the couch and still showing no signs of offering the beginning of conversation. “I can get you ice if you need it.”

“I’m fine,” Izaya says without looking back. “The pain’s not bad at all, today.”

“That’s good,” Shizuo says, but he’s not really listening; he’s still frowning at Izaya’s shoulders as he pads across the distance to the couch to join the other. “You don’t need a glass of water or anything?”

“I’m fine,” Izaya tells him, tipping his head sideways to raise an eyebrow at Shizuo’s question. “If I needed something to drink I could get it myself, you know. I’m not helpless, just slow.”

Shizuo frowns at him. “I know,” he says, coming around the corner of the couch to drop onto what has become his side of the cushions. “But I can help if you want.”

“I know.” Izaya’s smiling, very slightly; the curve of his mouth only barely touches his eyes, but it’s enough to ease some of the tension in Shizuo’s chest, enough to undo some of the unformed worry that has been running through his thoughts since they left the therapist’s office. “You don’t give me much chance to forget.”

“Shut up,” Shizuo says, but he’s flushing embarrassment more than growling into tension, and Izaya just grins at his discomfort. Shizuo’s the one who looks away, turning to stare out Izaya’s window at the familiar pattern of the building on the far side of the street while he tries to shake off the burn of self-consciousness rising in him under Izaya’s gaze.

“I’m glad,” he says, without looking back to see the way Izaya is watching him. “You’re improving really fast these last few days.”

“I’m glad too,” Izaya says. It sounds like the end of the sentence, sounds like he’s about to let quiet fall again; but then he speaks again, just as Shizuo is about to open his mouth to offer some new attempt at conversation. “It’ll make switching to a new therapist a lot smoother now that I’m doing so well alone.”

Shizuo looks back. Izaya’s not looking at him anymore; he has his phone out of his pocket, is watching whatever he has on the screen like it’s of far more interest than the inexplicable comment he just offered.

“You’re switching therapists?” Shizuo asks, trying to parse some meaning out of Izaya’s statement, trying to remember if the other had said anything about this over the past weeks. “Why, what’s wrong with this one?”

“Ah.” Izaya sounds abstracted, like he’s only barely paying attention to the conversation. “Nothing personally. She’s been great to work with so far. But the commute is a bit unreasonable, even if I switch to biweekly visits.”

Shizuo frowns harder. “What are you talking about?” he wants to know. “It’s only a couple of miles, it’s not that big of a deal if you have your chair with you. Are you trying to find one in _walking_ distance?”

“Don’t be silly, Shizu-chan,” Izaya says down to the screen of his phone. “I’m talking about after I move.”

Shizuo’s thoughts stutter over this statement. He has to think about it twice to be sure he heard correctly, has to reconsider his response three times before he’s sure of what he wants to say; even then, after the silence has gone heavy with length, his voice is shaking when he says, “You’re moving?” to the dark of Izaya’s bowed head.

Shizuo’s heart is pounding, his imagination sparking hot on hope and dread in equal parts, but Izaya just says, “Of course I am,” like he doesn’t hear the strain under Shizuo’s voice, or maybe like he doesn’t realize the importance of his statement. “This _is_ a hotel room, Shizu-chan, I was never going to stay here forever. It’s only because you’ve been hanging around that I’ve waited this long, even.” He swipes at something on his phone; Shizuo can see his screen flicker as the display changes. Izaya still isn’t looking at him. “And you have to go back to Ikebukuro soon.”

Shizuo can feel the warmth of hope in his chest fade, can feel despair settle onto his shoulders like the weight of Izaya’s familiar coat. “I can stay here longer,” he says, the words going cold on his tongue, his throat going tight on the start of panic. “As long as you need me, I can--”

“I don’t need you here,” Izaya says, and he looks up all at once to fix Shizuo with the dark of his stare. There’s no softness in his eyes, no smile at his mouth; his expression is set, as unscalable as a wall between them. “I can do whatever I need to do here on my own, Shizu-chan, I don’t need your help.” His fingers tighten on his phone, his knuckles going white with the pressure; Shizuo’s heart is pounding on panic, on desperate rejection of Izaya’s words, but he can’t find a crack to press against, can’t see any way to make it past the tense line of Izaya’s shoulders and to the shivering capitulation he gets sometimes on those rare occasions he can fit his mouth to Izaya’s and feel the tremor of honesty against his lips.

Shizuo swallows hard, reaches for resistance even in the face of this rejection. “Izaya-kun--”

Izaya moves suddenly, shoving his phone towards Shizuo so abruptly the other’s words die unfinished in his throat. “Here.”

Shizuo glances at the phone, looks back to the blank concentration in Izaya’s face. “...What?”

“Take it.” Izaya is staring at his hand, at his phone, not meeting Shizuo’s gaze at all. Shizuo stares at him for a long moment, trying to glean some kind of meaning from the other’s expression that he utterly fails to find; and finally he does the only thing that’s left to him and takes the phone Izaya is offering.

There’s a page open on the screen, the text of an email with some official header. Shizuo frowns at the display. “What is this?”

“Read it.” Izaya crosses his arms over his chest; when Shizuo looks up at him he’s staring out the window, his gaze fixed on the glass and his eyes utterly absent any focus at all. “Or I can read it to you, if that’s beyond your abilities.” It’s a weak attempt at an insult, falls flat before Shizuo’s irritation has even managed to flare enough for him to notice it beyond the chill weight of worry settling in along his spine; he barely spares Izaya a glance before he turns his attention back down to the text in front of him.

It’s unintelligible at first. There’s the usual header that goes along with emails, a politely professional opening and some paragraphs of gratitude that mean nothing at all to Shizuo. It’s near the bottom that he gets to the real meaning, a reference to the “attached lease for your records” and a link to a file. Shizuo still doesn’t have the least sense of what he’s meant to be making of this, isn’t seeing whatever revelation Izaya intends him to, so he clicks through to the attached document, wondering if there’s something particularly noteworthy about this instead. But there’s nothing there either, just the usual boring legality of a lease form very much like the one Shizuo has stored somewhere in his own files, with filled-in sections for monthly rent and the address of the apartment in question. Shizuo glances at it, looking away almost as soon as he recognizes what it is, and he’s halfway down the page before what he’s read sinks in, before he scrolls back up in a rush to reread the address.

He recognizes it. He knows that street name, knows the name of the apartment complex listed with typed-in care; for a moment all he can do is stare disbelief at the text in front of him, reading and rereading the words while his heart speeds in his chest, while his brain frantically recalculates his conclusion to be sure he’s not making a mistake before the surge of his reaction hits him. But he’s not, he’s right, he _knows_ , and when he scrolls down to the bottom of the page for the last piece of confirmation there’s no mistake there either: it’s Izaya’s name printed into the field for the tenant, it’s Izaya’s signature clear against the bottom of the page.

Shizuo feels like he can’t breathe. “You’re coming back.”

Izaya clears his throat. When Shizuo looks up at him he’s still staring out the window, his eyes still blank like he’s not seeing anything at all, but his mouth is softer, now, his lower lip visibly trembling as he takes a breath. “I’m going to need to find a new therapist.”

“You’re coming back,” Shizuo says, because that wasn’t really an answer and he wants to taste the words on his tongue, wants to hear the weight of them against his ears. “Izaya. You’re coming home.”

“I’ll need to hire someone to move my things for me,” Izaya says, and he’s ducking his head now, looking down to his lap as he presses his hands together and interlaces his fingers with careful attention. His wrists are shaking, his fingers trembling even when he tightens them around each other like he’s trying to press the motion to stillness. “I don’t know if anyone is going to want to see me. All my old connections are gone.”

“I want to see you,” Shizuo says. “I’ll be there.”

Izaya glances up at him, his eyes skimming over Shizuo’s expression and catching at his mouth for a moment before he looks down again. “I’m going--” he starts, and his words catch in his throat, cutting off to silence as his throat works hard on a swallow. His shoulders hunch, his spine curves to rock him in closer over his knees. “I’m going to need a lot of help.”

Shizuo’s heart is pounding so hard in his chest he’s surprised Izaya can’t hear it, feels like the rhythm of it should be echoing off the walls around them. He wants to say all kinds of things, wants to laugh and question and smile all over his face; but Izaya looks like he’s about to shake himself out of existence, and Shizuo only really needs to say one thing anyway.

“That’s okay,” he says, and slides closer on the couch. Izaya takes a breath as he draws nearer, his shoulders tipping in towards Shizuo as the other approaches, and Shizuo reaches out to fit his arm around Izaya’s shoulders and pull him in with gentle care until the other is leaning against him. “I can help.”

Izaya takes a deep breath, the sound shaking hard in the back of his throat, and turns in against Shizuo’s shoulder, unclasping his hands so he can reach out and wrap an arm around the other’s waist. Shizuo ducks his head down to press his mouth against Izaya’s forehead and pin a few dark strands of hair between the other’s skin and his lips, and Izaya makes a faint noise against his shirt, a sound like a laugh gone tense and trembling on too-much emotion.

His fingers are still shaking, even when he makes a fist on Shizuo’s shirt, but Shizuo’s hold on Izaya’s shoulders is steady.


	37. Mirrored

The taxi is Izaya’s idea.

Shizuo was expecting to take the train back, the same way he took it when he was leaving Ikebukuro. But Izaya had rejected the idea out of hand, without offering anything more coherent than some half-formed complaint about waiting at the station and getting transportation to his new apartment that concluded with “I’ll get us a taxi,” as if that decides the matter, and Shizuo hadn’t pushed for more. It still seems like an impossibility that he’s going back home, finally, after what feels like a lifetime spent away; the fact that he’s bringing Izaya back with him is a situation he can barely accept as reality even with the ever-growing collection of evidence to prove it to be so. Even the morning they are meant to leave Shizuo wakes up paranoid, certain that the taxi will never arrive or that Izaya won’t be in it after all; but the car pulls up to the curb minutes before time, and Shizuo is reaching for his bag when his phone buzzes with the text of _Hurry up_ from _Orihara Izaya_. Shizuo’s still getting used to seeing a name in place of the phone number he thinks he knows from memory now, but it doesn’t slow his departure; he doesn’t even reply to the text, just puts his phone in his pocket, and shuts off the lights, and lets his room door fall shut behind him. Checking out is a simple matter of dropping his keys off at the front desk and waving through the brief pleasantries of farewell; and then Shizuo is stepping through the front doors of the lobby, and the taxi is still waiting for him, and he can feel adrenaline running through him as if it’s a fight and not a car ride ahead of him.

Izaya’s in the backseat. Shizuo hadn’t been sure, even now, even with the text message still open on his phone, that the other wasn’t going to bail at the last moment; but he’s there, leaning against the support of the far door and watching Shizuo with an unreadable expression as the other returns from packing his bag into the trunk and slides into the seat next to him. His telltale coat is gone along with the unnecessary warmth it grants; Izaya’s just wearing a t-shirt and dark jeans, looking as completely ordinary as someone can whose face Shizuo knows better than his own. The casual outfit makes him look normal, makes him look unremarkable, and Shizuo has a brief flicker of suspicion as to the cause, a moment to wonder if Izaya isn’t trying to go unseen once they arrive in Ikebukuro, before Izaya leans forward towards the divider to the front seat and says, “Go ahead,” with some of his usual off-hand command on the words. Shizuo has to rush to pull the door shut as the driver shifts into gear, is still buckling his seatbelt when they draw out into the street, and for the first few minutes he’s distracted by watching the process of maneuvering through the city streets and the minimal traffic on them this early in the day. Shizuo watches the half-familiar streets flicker past far faster than he ever travelled them afoot, either alone or with Izaya, and for a moment he can feel the pressure of nostalgia against his chest, can feel the bittersweet ache of loss forming itself around the weight of the memories they are driving past with such speed. He catches a glimpse of Izaya’s favorite coffee shop, sees the turn they took to get to the therapist’s office; but it’s only for a moment, and it’s only a glimpse, and then they’re past the city limits and accelerating onto the main roads, and the town is gone just like that, left behind them as simply as if it were only a backdrop for the memories still in Shizuo’s head.

Izaya hasn’t spoken again. When Shizuo looks over at him he’s still leaning against the door, his elbow braced against the edge of the window and his chin pressing against the support of his hand. His eyes are fixed on the glass, his expression blank as he stares at the scenery flickering past; he looks focused, looks completely distant from the taxi itself. Shizuo would think he were lost in his own memories, abstracted by his own personal collection of nostalgia; but when he looks down Izaya’s legs are angled hard against the side of the car, his feet braced with trembling intensity against the floor under them, and his free hand is curled into a fist against the seat, the tension of his fingers pressing hard against his hand completely undoing the illusion of calm he’s trying to achieve across the easy line of his shoulders.

Shizuo can hear the breath he takes sound loud against the enclosed space of the car. “Izaya.”

“What?” Izaya’s voice is utterly flat, so wiped clean of any emotional tells that it as good as screams that there was something there to be stripped away in the first place. It reminds Shizuo of a years-old phone call, reminds him of the sound of _goodbye_ bare of anything but its most technical meaning.

“It’s going to be a while.” Shizuo braces his hand against the seat between them, lets his fingers ease into the distance interposing itself between their bodies. “You should relax.”

“What are you talking about, Shizu-chan?” Izaya asks without looking away from the window. “I am relaxed. I’m fine.”

 _You’re not_ , Shizuo wants to say. He doesn’t. He reaches out instead, stretches the very tips of his fingertips out to bump against the white of Izaya’s tight-clenched hand. Izaya doesn’t jump, doesn’t flinch back from the contact; but his head turns, very slightly, his chin dipping down as his gaze falls from the glass of the window to the angle of Shizuo’s touch resting against his hand.

“It’s going to be alright,” Shizuo says without looking away from Izaya’s face and without drawing the weight of his fingertips back from Izaya’s skin. Izaya’s hand is cold against his; Shizuo wonders briefly if he slept at all, last night. “We’ll be fine.”

“I know that,” Izaya says, too-fast and too-bright. “Of course I know that, Shizu-chan, it’s just a move.” But he’s uncurling his fingers from against his palm, twisting his hand up under the weight of Shizuo’s touch, and when Shizuo slides his hand into Izaya’s Izaya’s fingers tighten so hard against his that he hisses in a brief, involuntary reaction to the pressure. Izaya doesn’t let go, doesn’t even ease his hold, and after a moment, without looking away from their hands, he says “I’m scared” so softly Shizuo isn’t even sure he’s heard him at first.

Shizuo blinks. Izaya still has his head tipped down, is still angled more towards the window than towards Shizuo; but his wrist is shaking very slightly, Shizuo can feel the tremble of the other’s touch running through that painfully-tense grip against the back of his hand. Shizuo takes a breath, and settles his fingers in close against Izaya’s, and says, “I know,” as he tightens his hold with as much gentleness as he can find from the too-much strength in his fingers. “It’s okay.”

Izaya swallows, hard enough that Shizuo can hear the effort work in the other’s throat, but he doesn’t say anything; he just turns his head away again, fixing his gaze to the glass of the window as if he might see actually something passing by on the other side if he keeps facing it long enough. Shizuo can see the blur of color sweeping past the glass, the pattern of green and browns only occasionally interrupted by the metal of a street sign or the shine of water; but he can see Izaya’s reflection too, the faint outline of the other’s features held still against the moving backdrop of the miles they are crossing. Shizuo imagines he can see bruised-in exhaustion under the other’s eyes, imagines the details of tension at the corners of Izaya’s mouth and taut across the line of his forehead; and then he looks down, to the shape of their hands locked together on the seat between them, and when he tips his head back against the seat it’s to sigh himself into calm for the rest of the long drive to come.

Izaya doesn’t turn back around from the window, but by the time they’re into the second hour of driving, his hand is warm in Shizuo’s.


	38. Home

It feels strange to be back in Ikebukuro.

Shizuo has been braced for it, has had plenty of time to think about their imminent return over the hours of the near-silent drive. He can feel the thought like relief in his veins, like his whole body is relaxing just in anticipation of the familiar streets and friendly voices that are waiting for him. But if his shoulders relax Izaya’s just go tighter, hunching in around the other’s ears as his fingers tighten until they shake, until by the time they’re slowing at the city outskirts Izaya says, “I’m tired,” loud and bright and trembling into panic in his throat. “Move over, Shizu-chan, let me lie down.” It’s the first thing he’s said in hours, the first action he’s taken since he turned to fix his gaze out the window, and Shizuo doesn’t have time to react before Izaya is leaning sideways and over the empty seat between them. Izaya’s shoulder lands hard against his thigh, digging in with a sharp burst of pain as Shizuo hisses involuntary response, but Izaya doesn’t even attempt to offer an apology; he just shifts his weight as roughly as he tipped over, wiggling against the seat until his shoulder is pressed close to Shizuo’s leg and his head is resting against the other’s thigh. He hasn’t let his hold on Shizuo’s hand go; the way Izaya’s lying pins Shizuo’s wrist under the other’s body and strains discomfort into the angle of his elbow, but Izaya moves before Shizuo can, reaching out to grab hard against the other’s knee before Shizuo can even consider moving. His hold is just as desperate as the grip he has maintained on Shizuo’s hand for the last hours, his fingers just as straining, and when Shizuo looks down Izaya’s eyes are open in complete disregard for his claim of exhaustion, his breathing coming loud and fast as if he’s been exerting himself instead of sitting in a car. It reminds Shizuo of before, when his touch was a threat and not a comfort, when Izaya would flinch away instead of leaning in, and when he reaches to settle his free hand into Izaya’s hair it’s with some of that same uncertainty. But Izaya shudders an exhale at the touch, and shuts his eyes like he’s bracing himself, and he’s still tense but Shizuo can feel the other’s grip easing very slightly, so he doesn’t pull away. He keeps his hand where it is, trailing through Izaya’s hair to offer the most basic of physical comfort, and that’s how they come back into Ikebukuro: Shizuo with his fingers in Izaya’s hair and Izaya with his eyes shut as if he can delay his arrival the same way he can delay being seen.

They can’t stay like that forever. Shizuo is wondering, as the taxi turns them down a street familiar by sight if not by name, if he’s going to have to urge Izaya back to speech, if they won’t have to sit in the backseat of the taxi for another hour while Izaya collects himself. He’s already framing the words for an explanation to the driver, is braced for the inevitably awkward discussion; but Izaya takes a breath as the car slows around the turn, and pushes himself back to upright as they draw in against the curb as if he’s just been waiting for his cue to move. He draws his hand free of Shizuo’s careful hold like it’s not there, pushes a hand through his hair as if he really were asleep, and by the time the driver puts the car into park Izaya is leaning forward with his expression and voice as utterly composed as if this is simply a vacation trip and not a return to the city that has loomed so large in both their histories. Shizuo leaves Izaya to it and gets out of the car to retrieve his bag instead; by the time he’s closed the trunk again and slung the minor weight over his shoulder Izaya has his door open and is in the process of extricating himself from the backseat. Shizuo has seen Izaya manage this before, from the achingly slow steps needed on that first taxi ride to the far more fluid motions he has worked up to more recently; but he stalls out at the first contact with the pavement, his feet flat on the sidewalk but his bracing arm at the edge of the taxi visibly shaking with what little motion he has managed to achieve.

“Izaya-kun?” Shizuo says, but he’s moving closer without waiting for a reply, is reaching out to close his hold around Izaya’s wrist with reflexive speed. Izaya lets his grip on the edge of the taxi go, clutches hard at Shizuo’s elbow instead, and when he says “I can’t stand,” it’s in an undertone, hissing so softly Shizuo is sure even the driver won’t hear the words.

Shizuo glances down at the tense angle of Izaya’s legs. “What if I help you?”

Izaya shakes his head without looking up. “I don’t know.”

Shizuo looks to the building behind them. They’re close to the front doors -- it’s only a few steps over the sidewalk to the building front, and once they’re inside he’s sure there’s an elevator they can take most of the way -- but from the force Izaya is putting on his arm he’s not sure the other will be able to make it over the distance at all. “Is your wheelchair inside? I could go and--”

“ _No_ ,” Izaya hisses, his fingers drawing tighter at Shizuo’s arm. “Don’t leave me alone.”

Shizuo takes a breath, lets it out slow. “I can carry you.”

Izaya doesn’t like the idea. Shizuo can feel he doesn’t, can feel the weight of the other’s hold on his arm tighten in immediate rejection of the very suggestion. But he doesn’t speak, doesn’t give voice to the _no_ Shizuo can feel pressing against his skin, and when he shifts it’s to look down the empty street with as much care as if he’s afraid of seeing hundreds of people staring back at him.

“It’ll be faster,” Shizuo says, still in that soft range they’ve been speaking in. “Just a couple steps and we’ll be inside.”

“Fuck,” Izaya says, but the word hisses on resignation even before he ducks his head forward so his hair falls over his face. “Fine.”

He’s as quick to move as Shizuo, in spite of the strained frustration Shizuo can hear clinging against the weight of his words; Izaya’s reaching for his shoulder as fast as Shizuo leans down, has his arm up around the other’s neck before Shizuo has braced his arm underneath Izaya’s knees to pick him bodily up out of the car. Izaya hisses at the motion, his fingers fisting at Shizuo’s shirt, but he’s turning back before Shizuo can offer an apology, reaching to push the car door shut as Shizuo straightens to bring them both clear of the motion. Izaya turns in again as soon as he’s done, before the taxi has even shifted back into gear, pressing his head in hard against Shizuo’s chest like he’s trying to hide his features from the glow of the city sunlight for the brief distance they cross to the front doors of his new apartment complex. There’s no one there to see, no one in eyeshot along the whole street; even if there was Shizuo doesn’t think they would be recognized, thinks that his own presence would be enough to undo the possibility of Izaya’s in the mind of anyone who knew either of them at all. He only has a moment to consider it; then he’s letting his bracing hold at Izaya’s shoulders go so he can reach for the door to the apartment building to pull it open, and Izaya is sighing relief against his shoulder as if the conditioned cool of the interior is air for starving lungs, as if he were drowning in the open air of the street itself.

Shizuo hesitates in the front space, his steps stalling as the door swings shut behind them. “Do you want me to put you down?”

Izaya sighs. “Yes,” he says, and then, fast, before Shizuo can act on the reply: “But I won’t make it to my apartment if you do. My chair should have been delivered to my room already, just take me there.”

“Okay,” Shizuo says without protest, and moves forward to the row of elevators marking out one side of the lobby. One of the doors opens as soon as he pushes the button for them, the metal doors sliding apart as if in greeting; once he’s inside Izaya says “Seventeen” before Shizuo has a chance to ask which floor. It’s nearly the topmost -- there’s only one higher, and that selection has a lock next to it that clearly requires a specific key for access. Shizuo pushes the button and resettles his hold across Izaya’s shoulders as the elevator hums itself into motion to carry them higher. Shizuo doesn’t offer conversation, and Izaya stays silent to match; but the strain of panic across his shoulders has eased, his head has turned up to catch some of the overhead illumination, and the fist he was making of Shizuo’s shirt has gone gentle. He’s playing with the edge of the other’s vest as the elevator _dings_ at their arrival, his touch idle and unthought, and Shizuo can feel the weight of the contact like a shimmer of heat all down his spine, can taste electricity sharp as metal on his tongue.

“Room ten,” Izaya says as Shizuo steps out of the elevator. He’s watching his hands instead of looking up when Shizuo glances down at him, but his attention is soft, his expression abstracted rather than sharp with the strained panic he sustained through the entire car ride that left his legs cramping into immobility. He looks exhausted, like he’s ready to fall asleep before he even makes it in the front door of his apartment, and Shizuo doesn’t try to draw him into the distraction of conversation. He just moves down the hallway, letting the quiet radiate around them like warmth in the air, until even when he draws to a stop in front of the number Izaya indicated he hesitates to say anything, hesitates to break the momentary silence that has fallen onto their shoulders.

It’s Izaya who speaks, again, with the same off-hand flippancy as if he hasn’t noticed the tentative peace in the air, as if he doesn’t feel the calm forming itself from the quiet. “Alright,” he sighs, and pulls at Shizuo’s shoulder to tip himself closer to upright. “Put me down.”

Shizuo blinks and looks down at Izaya’s too-close face. “What?”

Izaya raises an eyebrow, his mouth quirking at the corner as he meets Shizuo’s gaze. “It’s not that difficult, Shizu-chan. Put me down so I can get into my apartment.”

“Are you sure you can stand?” Shizuo asks. “I don’t mind.”

“I do,” Izaya says. “Not that I don’t appreciate your concern,” with an odd resonance on the words that it takes Shizuo a moment to identify as sincerity. “But unless you’re planning a surprise wedding I’m not going to let you carry me over the threshold of my new apartment.”

It takes Shizuo a moment to follow Izaya’s line of logic. When he does he can feel the tension catch in his shoulders, can feel self-consciousness flush crimson all across his face. “Oh,” he says, and Izaya is grinning at him and Shizuo has to look away, has to set his jaw against the unfamiliar burn of embarrassment. “No.” He eases his hold on Izaya’s legs, lowering the other to the ground as carefully as he can; Izaya manages it with some grace, at least until his feet hit the ground and his knees buckle under the burden of his weight. Shizuo grabs at his elbow, bracing the other to upright as he flinches from the necessity; but Izaya doesn’t look upset, doesn’t even look particularly self-conscious about needing Shizuo’s support. He just looks steady, focused as he looks down and braces his feet against the floor, and he’s holding too-tight to Shizuo’s arm but Shizuo’s not about to pull away even with the dull ache of pressure radiating up to his shoulder from the angle of Izaya’s fingers at his skin. Izaya straightens his knees, steadies his weight, and then he lets go of Shizuo’s arm with one hand to reach for his pocket instead, his balance wobbling only very slightly as he gets his key free. It takes him two tries to get the key into the lock -- he tries it upside-down the first time and has to flip it over before it will work -- but then the lock clicks open, and Izaya pushes the door open, and Shizuo could see Izaya’s new apartment if he looked up and through the open doorway but he’s watching the other’s face instead, watching the shudder of tension that runs across his shoulders and the brief flutter of his lashes as he considers his new home. Izaya reaches for the doorframe, bracing hard against the support with one hand, and Shizuo knows what’s coming, is easing his hold on the other’s elbow even before the fingers at his arm release and Izaya draws his touch away completely. He hesitates in the doorway, his fingers at the frame tensing as his balance wobbles; but then he takes a breath, and takes a step, and crosses the entrance to his apartment unassisted. Shizuo stands on the outside, watching Izaya’s grip tighten against the frame and his other hand come out to grab for extra support against the handle of the open door, and he wants to step forward and hold Izaya’s elbow and wants to steady out the tremor running visibly through his unsteady legs, but he doesn’t, even when Izaya’s balance gives out on his second step and he has to let the doorframe go to brace himself against the wall just inside the apartment. But he doesn’t fall, even if he looks like he’s in danger of it, and for a moment he’s framed where he is, both feet flat in the entryway of his new apartment -- of his new _home_ \-- with Shizuo standing behind him staring hard at the line of his shoulders. Shizuo can hear Izaya take a breath, can hear him let it out slow; and then Izaya tips his head, just enough for Shizuo to see his features in profile, and says, “Okay, I’m ready for that help now,” with his voice straining audibly over the words.

Shizuo moves quickly, stepping forward over the distance in a pair of strides with his spine tensing on fear of Izaya collapsing before he can catch him. But Izaya stays on his feet, and holds himself upright until Shizuo’s fingers brush against his waist. Then he goes down as if all the strength has drained out of him at once, falling back so fast Shizuo barely has time to react before Izaya’s shoulders are colliding with his chest, and then the only way to keep him from falling is to catch an arm hard around his waist. Izaya huffs a laugh, amusement dragging over the back of his throat, and Shizuo would be irritated except that he’s supporting the whole of the other’s weight and he’s fairly sure Izaya wouldn’t have been able to stay upright any longer even if Shizuo hadn’t been there to catch him.

“That was fun,” Izaya observes without trying to turn in Shizuo’s hold. His arm falls across Shizuo’s around him; his fingers feel like fire against the cuff of Shizuo’s shirt. “Let me sit down to take my shoes off and we can do the grand tour.”

Shizuo does. Izaya is quick enough to move once he’s on the floor, turning around to work his shoes off with the lingering edge of self-deprecating laughter still clinging to his mouth, and Shizuo occupies himself with setting his bag down and shutting the door behind him before getting his own shoes off with far more offhand ease than Izaya shows with his. He’s waiting by the time Izaya looks up, ready to kneel alongside the other as Izaya reaches up to loop his arm back around Shizuo’s shoulders, and Shizuo isn’t sure if Izaya means him to carry him again or not but Izaya answers that question immediately by bracing his feet against the floor and leaning hard against the support he has at Shizuo’s neck. Shizuo stands carefully, giving Izaya the time he needs to collect his balance under him, and then they’re both on their feet, if somewhat unsteady with it.

Izaya takes the lead, insofar as he can while leaning heavily against the support of Shizuo’s shoulders. The apartment isn’t that large -- nothing like the size Shizuo recalls of Izaya’s old apartment in Shinjuku -- but they’re moving with such painful slowness that it takes almost fifteen minutes just to make a lap of the living room. There’s a couch, and a few chairs, and a desk set up in the corner; everything has the odd look of newly-purchased furniture to it, has been arranged with picture-perfect precision rather than the comfortable misalignment of anything that’s been actually used. Izaya’s wheelchair is there too, delivered Shizuo assumes at the same time as the rest of his belongings, but Izaya barely glances at it where it’s set by the door, apparently content instead to rely on Shizuo to half-carry him through the space of the apartment. The kitchen is off to the edge of the living room, a dining table set with a pair of chairs alongside it; Izaya barely pauses over that, skimming over the smooth clean of the counters and the light fixture over the table without even bothering to turn it on. It’s the hallway he makes for instead, urging Shizuo into the dim-lit space and to the pair of doors along it. One is the bathroom, with everything set farther apart than what Shizuo is used to to match the wheelchair-wide door; the other is the bedroom, and it’s there Izaya heads last, when his legs are shaking so badly on exertion he’s hissing through each forward step he takes. It makes Shizuo flinch, tightens his arm around Izaya’s waist like he can take what weight remains for Izaya to bear on his own, and then Izaya opens the bedroom door, and Shizuo follows the unsteady pace of Izaya’s steps into the room. It’s all but empty as yet, carries the same untouched chill the rest of the house does; there’s a low table alongside the bed, a shut door Shizuo is sure leads to the closet and another he suspects heads back to the bathroom, and a box in the corner still taped shut over what few personal belongings Izaya brought back with him. The bed itself is neatly made, the unfamiliar sheets folded down over the mattress and the low bedframe; it’s very clean, all but the box in the corner carefully arranged as if to match some picture from a magazine, and Shizuo is reminded vividly of the hotel room they left behind them this morning, with the crisp edges of not-a-house everywhere he looks.

“That’s it,” Izaya says next to him, his voice soft like he’s not quite sure he wants to be heard. “Home, I guess.”

Shizuo’s hand tightens at Izaya’s waist. “Yeah.” Izaya’s not looking at him when he glances down, but his fingers are making a fist of Shizuo’s shirt, like he thinks Shizuo might be about to vanish if he eases his hold on the other. Shizuo’s heart is pounding, his throat tight on some half-formed emotion; he’s not sure what to say, not sure what to do, but when he opens his mouth what he says is, “I’m glad you’re back,” without looking away from the dark of Izaya’s hair.

Izaya looks up. His mouth is soft, the corners of it dipping down like he’s thinking about frowning, and his eyes are too wide to allow space for his usual secrets in the shadow of his lashes. He looks startled, as if he wasn’t really expecting Shizuo to speak or as if he can’t make sense of the words, and a little bit pained, some tension from the effort still trembling through his legs creasing in his forehead and in the set of his jaw. His arm is around Shizuo’s neck, his fingers fisted on Shizuo’s shirt, and Shizuo can’t pull away and doesn’t want to, so he does the only thing left to him and leans in to press his mouth against the uncertainty soft against Izaya’s lips. Izaya makes a weak noise, something hot and shaky and half-formed, and then he’s turning in and reaching up and Shizuo is reaching for him too, matching Izaya’s turn to meet him halfway and catch the arc of his motion with his other hand at Izaya’s waist. It’s easy to hold Izaya where he is like this, with Shizuo’s hands bracketing just against the other’s hips, but Izaya’s still clinging to him too, has both his arms up and around Shizuo’s neck as if he’s trying to pull himself off the ground entirely by the support Shizuo is granting him. Shizuo’s grip is gentle, as careful against Izaya’s body as he can make it as he opens his mouth to let Izaya lick past his lips; but then Izaya’s legs buckle, his strength giving way at last, and Shizuo barely manages to catch him before Izaya falls to hang from the grip he has around the other’s neck. Izaya’s shirt catches at his fingers, slides up high off the other’s skin, and Izaya laughs in the very back of his throat, a gust of air as much heat as sound.

“You’re sweeping me off my feet, Shizu-chan,” he says, and Shizuo thinks it’s meant to be teasing but it comes out too low for mockery, purring into something over the back of Izaya’s tongue that goes through Shizuo like electricity. He takes a breath, tries to pull himself back into composure; and Izaya drags at his hold around Shizuo’s shoulders to catch his lips to the other’s and stall out Shizuo’s momentary attempt at calm. Shizuo’s the one who groans, this time, his hand slipping to grab and brace Izaya’s weight, and his fingers land at bare skin, his hand pressing flush against Izaya’s waist under the rumple of his hiked-up shirt. They both hiss at that, the sound shared out between their mouths, and then Izaya tips his weight sideways and Shizuo stumbles, caught off-balance by the distraction of Izaya’s skin against his, and when they fall it’s against the edge of the bed, the soft of the mattress and the neatly-made sheets stalling their motion halfway to the floor. Shizuo huffs at the impact, fumbles a hand under them to push his weight up and off Izaya; but Izaya’s hands are caught around the back of his neck, and Izaya’s arching up to kiss at the corner of his mouth, and Shizuo’s motion stalls out half-completed as his lashes flutter heavy on distraction. Izaya’s warm under him, his mouth soft under Shizuo’s, and when Shizuo shifts his hand against Izaya’s skin he can feel the way the other shudders with it, can taste the whine of response that Izaya spills against his parted lips.

“Izaya,” Shizuo tries to say, but the name goes sideways as his hand slides higher, as Izaya arches off the support of the bed to meet him. Shizuo’s heart is pounding, fear of going too fast, of assuming too much cold along his spine; but there’s heat in him too, a rising tide of warmth spreading out into his veins and trembling through his fingers, and when his hand slides up and across Izaya’s chest he can hear the way Izaya moans against his mouth, can feel how hard the other’s heart is pounding under the weight of his palm. Shizuo pulls back without thinking, blinking hard to steady his vision into focus on Izaya’s expression; but Izaya just looks heat-dazed, looks like he’s coming undone over the sheets even before he lets one of his hands go from Shizuo’s neck so he can push himself farther back over the bed. It’s a half-formed motion, as effective at rumpling the sheets as it is as at moving Izaya back, but it’s enough to leave him breathless over the invitation of the half-made bed, enough to let Shizuo see the color rising to the other’s cheeks and the pant of his breathing at his lips, and Shizuo can’t imagine what better invitation he might have than this.

He moves slow. It’s hard to trust his own instincts in this, not after he’s spent so long learning to follow Izaya’s instead; but Izaya arches into his touch as soon as Shizuo’s fingers skim his skin, his lashes smudging dark over the color of his eyes as his head tips back like he’s making a show of his throat, and Shizuo can’t breathe right, can’t figure out how to exist with gentleness trembling through his fingertips instead of strength. He can see Izaya’s stomach tense under his touch, can see Izaya’s fingers curl hard against the sheets; and then his thumb bumps the top of Izaya’s jeans, and Izaya makes a noise and reaches out for Shizuo’s sleeve so fast Shizuo is flinching back even before Izaya’s fingers have closed around his arm.

“Sorry--” he starts, and “ _Shizuo_ ,” Izaya grates, his voice so raw and aching on the word that Shizuo is shuddering with the heat of it even before he processes the sound, the weight of his own name without the framework of Izaya’s teasing nickname shaped around it. It steals his breath, leaves his chest empty of anything but heat, and then Izaya’s fingers tense against his arm and pull down and Shizuo is obeying without hesitation, without waiting for anything more clear than the force of the other’s touch. His fingers catch at Izaya’s jeans, his palm presses down against the texture of the fabric, and Izaya arches up into the weight of his touch, some low note in his throat that would sound like pain if Shizuo couldn’t feel how hot the other is against his touch. Shizuo wants to look up, wants to look down, wants to press his hands to Izaya’s skin and watch the way the other’s expression thrums with odd tension almost but not quite like pain; but his heart is beating too fast, and his hands are shaking too much, and he’s leaning down instead, ducking his head to the tremor of breathing rippling along Izaya’s stomach as his fingers catch and pull at the fastenings of the other’s dark jeans. Izaya’s fingers tighten at his arm, pressure an acknowledgment more than a warning, and Shizuo opens his mouth against Izaya’s skin, breathes heat into his lungs like smoke as Izaya’s jeans come open under his fingers, as he draws his hand up by inches to press his touch under the edges of loosened clothing. The fabric slides down, Izaya hisses a breath, and Shizuo’s fingers bump against hot-flushed resistance just as he’s lifting his head to look down. Izaya jerks at the contact, his whole body tipping up towards Shizuo leaning over him, but Shizuo barely notices; Izaya’s hot to the touch, flushed hard against the drag of his fingers, and he’s moving without thinking at all, sliding down over the bed until his knees hit the floor and his shoulders are framed by the trembling line of Izaya’s angled-open legs. Izaya’s hold on his arm eases, his fingers reaching to tangle at Shizuo’s hair instead, and Shizuo ducks his head without waiting for more to catch his mouth around the head of Izaya’s cock.

He tastes like salt. There’s bitter against Shizuo’s tongue, heat burning at his lips and flaring electric in his veins; and Izaya’s fingers are twisting in his hair, Izaya is making a noise that sounds so much like a sob Shizuo would stop were it not for that hand in his hair giving desperate force to keep him where he is. Izaya’s legs are shaking, from exhaustion or desire Shizuo isn’t sure which; when he reaches out to weight a hand against the other’s knee to hold him still he can feel the force shudder up his whole arm before he can offer enough pressure to hold Izaya to stillness. Izaya is hot across his tongue, pressing hard against the catch of Shizuo’s lips, and Shizuo isn’t completely sure what he’s doing but it doesn’t seem to matter, judging from the broken-off inhales Izaya is fighting through and the tension of the fingers in his hair. Shizuo slides down closer, presses his lips in tighter and licks up against Izaya’s length; and Izaya makes a desperate sound all the way down in his chest, “ _Shizu--_ ” broken off into a moan before Shizuo can hear it as teasing or sincere. It doesn’t really make a difference, anyway, not with all the blood in his veins flaring to heat with every breath Izaya gasps, with every move Shizuo takes, and when he draws his hand away it’s just so he can duck his head closer, so he can brace his hold at the other’s hip as he takes Izaya farther back into his mouth. Izaya’s hold eases, his fingers sliding back through Shizuo’s hair to tense against the back of the other’s neck, and Shizuo can feel his touch like a brand, like an ember burning a painless scar against his skin the closer they get. He can smell metal in the air, can taste bitter on his tongue, and Izaya’s tensing under him, his legs flexing to strain him upwards by an inch, two, arcing out a desperate attempt for whatever sensation he can get. Shizuo’s heart is pounding, his whole body tense with anxious anticipation as he presses closer, as his breathing strains on heat; and Izaya shudders all at once, his entire body giving way to relief as Shizuo’s mouth fills with the bitter-heat of salt. Shizuo swallows hard, without thinking, and Izaya quakes and moans in a sharp, cut-off sound that flares under Shizuo’s skin like electricity crackling out of the sky to ground itself out in him. He has to pull away, has to gasp for breath, and Izaya shivers once more under his hold and goes still and slack but for the pressure of his fingers still against Shizuo’s neck.

Izaya’s staring at the ceiling when Shizuo eases his hold and slides back up over the bed towards him, his eyes unfocused and his lips parted on too-fast breathing. His cheeks are still flushed, his eyes dilated dark into heat; he blinks as Shizuo comes closer, visibly fighting for some measure of coherency, but even when he turns his head to look at the other his vision is hazed out-of-focus, his mouth still slack even after he’s tried to swallow himself back to the present moment.

“Izaya,” Shizuo says, his voice shuddering down to resonate against the inside of his chest with a weight he didn’t expect. Izaya’s eyelashes flutter, he catches a sharp inhale of air, and then he’s surging up off the bed, reaching to catch his free hand against Shizuo’s neck atop the first to hold the other steady against the sudden press of his mouth. Shizuo hisses surprise, his eyes dipping shut involuntarily as his mouth comes open, and Izaya licks in past his lips, tracing against the inside of Shizuo’s mouth like he’s trying to find the taste of himself on Shizuo’s tongue. The idea makes Shizuo groan in a brief flare of heat along his spine, and then Izaya’s pressing close against his chest and trailing a hand down over his vest and Shizuo’s heart is speeding even faster than it was before, all the held-back heat in his veins surging brighter at this suggestion of satisfaction. It’s an effort to catch it back; it takes a monumental force of will to drag his voice back into his throat, to manage “You don’t--you don’t have to” even as the words undo themselves to smoke at the back of his throat.

“I know,” Izaya says, and “I want to,” hot against the part of Shizuo’s lips, and Shizuo can’t fight it back anymore, he can feel his resistance crumble as if it’s cement crushing to dust under his too-strong grip. He makes a sound against Izaya’s mouth, an incoherent note of surrender for the other’s lips, and when Izaya pushes against him Shizuo falls backwards, his shoulders landing against the tangle of Izaya’s sheets under him while the other tips forward over him. Izaya’s fingers are dragging at his shirt, forcing the fabric loose of the edge of Shizuo’s pants, and Shizuo reaches out at the same time, his wrist bumping against the shift of Izaya’s as he fumbles with the weight of his belt to unfasten the buckle. Izaya’s chin is tipped down so he can see what he’s doing, his breathing catching faster as he pulls at the zipper of Shizuo’s slacks, but Shizuo is watching Izaya, is seeing the pace of the other’s breathing stick against the damp of his lips and watching the shadows in Izaya’s eyes shift with every motion of his lashes. His heart is skipping to doubletime, his free hand is coming up to alight at Izaya’s hip as if to steady the other’s balance, and then Izaya’s hand is against him, Izaya’s fingers are drawing up over his length, and Shizuo can’t help the way his head goes back on the heat of the moan in his throat, can’t help the way his hips buck up sharply towards the pressure of the other’s touch. Izaya huffs a laugh, the sound sharp and short in his throat, and then he’s closing his hand around Shizuo and leaning in again to press his mouth against the other’s as he strokes up over him. Shizuo groans against Izaya’s lips, and reaches up to catch his hand into Izaya’s hair, and it’s too much, he realizes even as his fingers tighten, it’s too much contact and too much pressure and--and Izaya whines against his mouth, and arches in closer as his grip tightens and drags heat out into Shizuo’s veins. Shizuo shudders, his whole body quivering with an excess of tension he can’t restrain, and Izaya shifts closer against him as he finds a rhythm for the drag of his hand. His hold is steadier than Shizuo expected, his grip stronger, and Shizuo doesn’t know what Izaya’s doing exactly but it’s sparking heat into his veins with every stroke, every shift of Izaya’s fingers is drawing tension tighter along the curve of his spine. He can feel Izaya’s breathing coming faster against his mouth, can see the shift of Izaya’s lashes close to his own when he opens his eyes to struggle for clarity, and everything is going hot, he can feel his self-restraint evaporating like it does before the surge of his anger but his hands are still gentle, his hold at Izaya’s hip is still painfully delicate. Izaya’s lashes dip to darkness, Izaya’s thumb presses in hard under the head of his cock, and Shizuo gasps, “ _Izaya_ ” forming itself from the heat filling his chest, and Izaya groans something incoherent and satisfied as Shizuo’s awareness fractures away into surging pleasure. He can hear his breathing dragging hard in his chest, can feel each gasping inhale he takes against the waves of sensation sweeping over him; and he can feel Izaya pressing close against his chest, can feel the heat of the other’s hold on him and the soft of dark hair under his palm and the sharp edge of Izaya’s hip against his fingers. They’re both breathing hard, both gasping for air like they can’t find it in the space between them, and Shizuo’s head is spinning and his heart is racing but his touch is gentle, still cradling care around the fragile edges of Izaya’s body even with the trembling relief still rushing through him with alternate breaths.

There’s a beat of time -- a second, a minute, an hour, Shizuo can’t be sure. But finally Izaya shifts, easing his hold and drawing his hand away, and when he speaks it’s to say, “Shizuo,” like the start to an unfinished question against Shizuo’s mouth.

Shizuo takes a breath and shifts his hand at Izaya’s hair. When he presses his thumb in closer he can see Izaya’s lashes flutter, can feel the hiss of an inhale the other takes against his lips.

“Welcome home,” Shizuo says, and holds Izaya steady as he leans in for a kiss gentle with lingering satisfaction.

It feels good to be back.


	39. Nostalgic

Izaya falls asleep without even making it under the blankets. It’s not that unreasonable, if Shizuo thinks about it; he can see the shadows under the other’s eyes that say he didn’t sleep much the night before, if he managed anything at all, and he’s had enough stress to span a whole handful of days, much less the first half of one it’s been compressed into. It’s still strange to see his expression going soft with unconsciousness, to listen to his breathing slowing and steadying into the heavy rhythm of rest, to have him so deeply asleep that even when Shizuo tentatively moves back to extricate himself from the other’s hold Izaya barely shifts to draw his arm in against his chest instead of looped around Shizuo’s shoulders. He looks relaxed, peaceful in a way Shizuo hasn’t seen him even on those nights they spent together in Izaya’s old hotel room; Shizuo feels vaguely like he’s intruding on something, like he’s seeing something maybe he shouldn’t by lingering over Izaya as he drifts into the weight of dreams. He slides away and off the bed, hesitating only a moment before making for the shut door nearest the one leading to the hallway. It does go to the bathroom, as he guessed it would, and the bathroom is as precisely furnished as the rest of the apartment, with a plush bathmat and a pair of towels so neatly folded it’s hard to believe they are intended for use rather than as an ornamental device. Shizuo shuts the door to the bedroom, and the one to the hallway for good measure, and when he turns on the shower it’s with a cringe for the sound of the water hitting the tile and a moment of wondering if he’s interrupting the peace of Izaya’s sleep. But his skin is sticky with the discomfort of travel, and the shower is promising the comfort of heat, and he lacks the self-restraint to retreat from the relief the water offers now that it’s here in front of him. He continues instead, letting the steam fill the bathroom to haze while he strips out of the rumpled mess his fingers and Izaya’s together have made of his clothes, and leaves everything in a heap on the floor while he retreats to the glass-walled warmth of the shower itself. The water rinses the stick and catch of salt from his skin, the soap arrayed on the inside shelves washes the sweat-damp from his hair, and by the time Shizuo emerges into the heat haze of the bathroom he feels far more comfortable in his own skin than he did after the stress of the car ride. His clothes are a mess, no matter how he looks at them; he only considers them for a minute before tumbling them into a heap and making use of one of Izaya’s brand-new towels around his waist while he returns to the entryway for his bag and the changes of clothes inside. He retrieves a clean shirt and another pair of slacks, goes back to the bathroom to change into them while he drapes the damp towel over his wet hair, and once he’s reasonably if not professionally dressed he opens the door into the bedroom again and goes back to check on Izaya.

Not much has changed. If Izaya was disturbed by the running water the effect didn’t last; the only shift he’s made is to strip his jeans off and drop them over the edge of the bed before fitting under the blankets himself. He’s curled against one side of the mattress, the same side Shizuo left him on, with one arm still tucked in close against his chest but the other spread out wide over the opposite side and the sheets untouched except for the faint outline Shizuo left there when he was lying across them earlier. The memory makes Shizuo’s skin go hot and flares a shiver of heat up his spine, and he doesn’t mean to make a sound but he must take some kind of an inhale because Izaya stirs and shifts, twisting to look back to Shizuo standing in the doorway.

“Shizu-chan,” he says, the sharp edge of his voice blunted by the haze of sleep in his throat. “How’s the shower?”

“It’s good,” Shizuo says. It’s weird to realize he’s the first to use the shower in Izaya’s new apartment, stranger to realize that Izaya doesn’t look at all concerned by this. He reaches up for the towel still heavy against his hair and draws it free to close his fingers around the soft of it instead. “I think I’m going to head home.”

Izaya’s expression tightens, his forehead creasing as his mouth dips down for a flinch of a reaction. It’s something of unhappiness, a shiver of what might be fear; it’s more than enough to close like a fist around Shizuo’s heart, enough to press a wave of sympathy into him even before Izaya says, “Don’t,” more like a plea than an order. “Stay.”

Shizuo twists at the towel in his hands. “I have to go eventually.”

“I know.” Izaya is watching him, his mouth still soft on almost-panic; Shizuo can’t look away from the dip of his lower lip on the emotion. He wants to press his fingers to the curve, wants to press his lips to it to see if that would chase it away. “Not yet. Stay for tonight.”

Shizuo takes a breath, lets it out in a rush that is as much resignation as protest. “I want a cigarette.”

Izaya lifts a hand and waves it dismissively through the air. “Open a window or something,” he says, his expression easing back to exhaustion as he apparently parses Shizuo’s implicit agreement. “There’s an ashtray on the coffee table.”

Shizuo blinks. “I didn’t think you smoked.”

“I don’t.” Izaya turns down against the blankets. “You do. Come back to bed when you’re done.”

There’s any number of pieces of that Shizuo could protest, from the lingering effect of cigarette smoke in the air to the casual demand of Izaya’s order that he return to the weight of implication on Izaya’s half-conscious statement. But he can feel exhaustion laid across his shoulders like a physical presence, and Izaya’s bed looks far more inviting with Izaya in it than it did empty, so in the end Shizuo retreats back out to the living room and opens a window before sitting on the floor under it and smoking his way through the simple comfort of a much-needed cigarette. By the time he’s done sleep is making a bid for his attention, even with the sun still glowing evening-gold outside, so he crushes his cigarette out against the empty ashtray before shutting the window and returning to the bedroom where Izaya is waiting.

He’s fallen back asleep in Shizuo’s absence, or appears to be asleep; but when Shizuo hesitates at the edge of the bed Izaya says, “At least take your pants off,” without opening his eyes or showing any other sign of consciousness. Shizuo can feel his cheeks color into embarrassment; but he’ll be more comfortable, he knows, and his shirt follows his slacks, both folded far more neatly than his first pair and laid atop the table before he draws back the blankets from the far side of the bed. Izaya shifts without speaking, lifting his arm to make space for Shizuo on the mattress, and no sooner is Shizuo settled on his back than Izaya is reaching out to drop his arm around Shizuo’s waist and tuck his head into the pillow just over Shizuo’s shoulder. His lips catch at the other’s undershirt, his arm feels like it’s glowing to heat; Shizuo can feel electricity crackling through him, is sure he’ll never be able to get to sleep at all like this. But Izaya’s breathing is soft by his ear, and the other doesn’t shift at all after that first movement, and Shizuo is half into a dream before he realizes it, the immediacy of reality giving way to the half-formed illogic of imagination. His arm is tingling, his elbow caught under Izaya’s weight; when he shifts it’s more instinct than intent to drag his arm free and loop it around the other’s shoulder instead. Izaya stirs against him, mumbling some incoherent protest, but his complaint dies to silence when Shizuo turns his head in to press his mouth to Izaya’s hair, and Izaya’s sliding back to sleep before Shizuo pulls away, his breathing catching warm against the soft tickle of Izaya’s hair at his lips.

When he wakes up the room is quiet, his thoughts are slow, and Izaya is gone. Shizuo has turned over at some point in the night to reach out over the now-empty half of the bed; he has to lie still for several long minutes while he slowly comes back to consciousness and rearranges the pieces of the day before that tell him where he is, who he was with, why it’s strange to be alone. After he’s done all of that he finally moves, pushing up onto an elbow and blinking blearily at the room around him in an attempt to determine where Izaya has gone. The blankets are still rumpled on the other side of the mattress, clearly showing the signs of someone else getting up at some point, but any warmth that was caught in them is long since gone; the only heat there is what’s left from Shizuo’s unconscious reach across them and the weight of his shoulders against the mattress. The rest of the room is still nearly as it was when Shizuo fell asleep -- his clothes are still folded on the table next to him, although Izaya’s previously-discarded jeans are absent, and the box that was in the corner is gone, now, emptied or moved Shizuo isn’t sure which. There’s no sound of running water, no glow of light from around the edge of the bathroom door, so Izaya’s either in the living room or not in the apartment at all, and the first seems like the best place to start looking. Shizuo sits up the rest of the way, pushes the soft of the unfamiliar blankets back to the foot of the bed, takes a moment to consider getting properly dressed; but curiosity wins out over the few seconds it would take to get his clothes back on, and in the end he leaves his slacks and shirt folded where they are while he makes for the bedroom door in just boxers and an undershirt. He’s still yawning down the hallway, still shaking the last haze of sleep from his focus as he emerges into the main space of the apartment, and then he comes around the corner to the living room and sees Izaya.

Izaya’s not looking at him. He’s standing at the closed window, his back to Shizuo and his gaze fixed on the city on the other side of the glass. He’s dressed normally, if absent the telltale weight of his coat around his shoulders; on his feet like he is now he looks almost like he used to, like he’s thrown himself back years into the past. Then Shizuo blinks, and the details around Izaya’s silhouette come into focus as the glow of illumination eases to grant him better clarity of vision: the empty wheelchair a few feet away, the hand free of Izaya’s pocket to catch himself at the window if he needs it, the carefully wide stance for easier balance on uncertain legs. He’s like he was and unlike he was, showing all the signs of change in a thousand little fingerprints of effect on the outline of his self, and for just a minute Shizuo can feel awareness of that like a chill down his spine, like his whole body is echoing back that memory of who Izaya was to better highlight the differences in who he is now.

Shizuo doesn’t know how long he might stay there, left to his own devices. But Izaya barely gives him a handful of seconds before he says,“Are you just going to stand there staring?” without turning around to look at Shizuo on the other side of the room. Shizuo blinks, startled by this sudden acknowledgment, and Izaya tips his head to glance back over his shoulder with a flicker of a smile at his lips. His mouth is sharp, his eyes are soft, and Shizuo is moving forward as if on cue, his feet carrying him over the distance between them without any need for conscious decision on his part.

“Morning,” he says, somewhat unnecessarily. Izaya is still watching him approach; as Shizuo draws closer he can see Izaya’s lashes flicker, can see the other’s attention skim briefly over the whole of his body before returning to his face. “I didn’t know where you were.”

“You were asleep when I woke up,” Izaya tells him. He looks better than he did; some of the shadows under his eyes have faded, some of the strain across his shoulders has eased. And he’s smiling, still, the curve clinging to his lips like he can’t quite shake it free even with the bite of mockery under his tone. “I thought I’d get my unpacking done while you slept.” Shizuo glances around the room, but it looks nearly identical to what he remembers from the night before, and Izaya huffs a laugh.

“Just what I brought back with me,” he says. “I’ll have more coming from storage later, but that’s nothing particularly critical.” He’s still watching Shizuo sideways, his eyes dark with focus on the other’s face. “You sleep like the dead, Shizu-chan, I thought you would never wake up.”

“Sorry,” Shizuo says, the apology coming in automatic response to the implied judgment on Izaya’s words. “I guess I was tired.”

“You barely moved when I got up,” Izaya tells him. “Or while I was putting things away. I was a little worried I was going to have to call someone to have you carried out so I could get my bed back to myself tonight.”

“ _Really_ tired,” Shizuo amends, but Izaya’s still fighting back that smile and he can’t find the sparking burn of irritation anywhere in him. He looks down instead, to the slack weight of Izaya’s hand at his side; Izaya’s wrist is relaxed, his fingers curled like a suggestion that seems oddly easy for Shizuo to take. He reaches over the gap between them, touching his fingers in against the inside of Izaya’s wrist first as he hesitates for permission; Izaya looks down, his smile flickering and fading into distraction, but he doesn’t pull his hand away, and after a moment even turns his wrist back to offer his palm to the almost-touch of Shizuo’s fingers. Shizuo watches his hand slide into Izaya’s, tracking the motion of his touch as he interlaces his fingers with the other’s, and by the time he looks back up Izaya’s staring out the window again, his eyes dark and focused on something far in the distance, something Shizuo doesn’t turn to see. He watches Izaya instead, trailing his attention across the dark of the other’s lashes and the careful set of his mouth, across the softness clinging to his lips that’s too heavy to be a smile but too light to be a frown, some careful passivity like he’s waiting for something to happen to him instead of trying to happen to everything around him, like he’s finally being the observer he always wanted to be. Except maybe not that, either, because his hand is tight in Shizuo’s, and his fingers are tense around Shizuo’s hold, and when Shizuo turns in to take a half-step closer Izaya takes a breath of reaction, the rush of air past his lips giving away his distraction even if his gaze stays fixed on the city outside.

“Izaya,” Shizuo says, careful on the other’s name as if it’s breakable, as if it’s glass on his tongue. Izaya’s lashes flutter, his throat works on a swallow, but he still doesn’t turn, doesn’t look at Shizuo even when Shizuo stretches to touch his fingers to Izaya’s far shoulder, even when Shizuo leans in to fit his lips against the soft of Izaya’s hair. It’s not until Shizuo’s mouth touches the other’s forehead that Izaya’s eyelashes dip to shadow, that he breathes out an exhale that sounds like relief as much as resignation, and when Shizuo’s fingers draw up against the curve of Izaya’s neck Izaya turns his head in surrender to the unstated request, finally giving up his focus on the city to let Shizuo kiss against the curve of his mouth. His lips are soft, his skin is warm; even when his fingers tighten against Shizuo’s hand his grip isn’t painful, his hold is gentle instead of desperate. Shizuo is slow about the kiss, fitting his mouth against Izaya’s as gently as he fits his fingers into the other’s hair, and when Izaya draws back he lets him go, blinking his vision back into some measure of focus while he becomes aware of the rhythm of his heartbeat speeding in his chest, of the pace of his breathing coming harder in his throat.

“Follow me,” Izaya says, still so close the words spill warm across Shizuo’s mouth, and he’s turning away, sliding free of Shizuo’s careful hold so he can take the lead down the hallway and draw Shizuo in the wake of his tentative-slow steps. He still has a hold on Shizuo’s hand, still has their fingers slotted together as if Shizuo needs to be led, as if Shizuo has ever needed any kind of guide to follow Izaya; but Shizuo doesn’t protest the contact, doesn’t try to pull away or take the lead even when Izaya’s steps go slow and halting with the effort of walking across the width of the apartment. He just slows his steps, matches the length of his stride to Izaya’s uncertain one, until it’s Izaya who draws him into the bedroom, Izaya who reaches out to brace himself against the edge of the mattress with his free hand as he lets himself drop to the support the bed offers. He does let his hold on Shizuo’s hand go, then, slipping his fingers free as easily as he stepped aside from the other’s hand against his hair; but he’s moving right away, reaching for the bottom edge of his shirt and tugging it up and off his chest as fast as Shizuo realizes what he’s doing. Shizuo has a moment to stare, a moment to watch the smooth flex of Izaya’s shoulders and stomach as he strips his shirt up over his head; then Izaya is tugging his head free of the collar, and looking back up at Shizuo, and Shizuo moves without waiting for an order to echo Izaya’s movement. The action is simple, a drag of cloth so familiar he doesn’t have time to think about the grace of the movement or trying to put on a show; but when he emerges from the collar and shakes his hair back from his face Izaya is staring at him with an expression like Shizuo’s never seen from him before. His eyes are dark, his mouth is soft, his lips parted on some too-fast inhale; Shizuo can see the flex of his fingers tensing against the tangled sheets under him, can see his lashes dip heavy for just a moment. His tongue catches at his lip, traces momentary damp across the skin, and then he looks up, his gaze meeting Shizuo’s, and Shizuo nearly flinches back from the heat smouldering behind the dark color of Izaya’s eyes. He can feel the weight of the other’s stare like a physical touch, like electricity fluttering down the whole length of his spine, and then Izaya reaches out for him and Shizuo is responding immediately, dropping to a knee against the end of the bed while Izaya’s fingers curl around the back of his neck to pull him in closer. Izaya’s lips are still parted, his whole expression soft like he’s asking for a kiss; but Shizuo barely manages to press one against the give of the other’s lips before Izaya is pulling away to fall over the bed and stare those shadows back up at Shizuo’s face.

“Check the drawer,” he says, the words so far from the heat in Shizuo’s mind that they’re impossible to parse. It’s not until Izaya turns his head and lets his hand fall to gesture towards the bedside table that Shizuo catches up, and even then it takes him a moment to collect himself enough to move as directed. Izaya shifts as he turns away, sliding himself farther back on the bed and reaching for the fastenings of his jeans, and that’s a distraction too, when Shizuo wants to look back and watch the press of Izaya’s fingers against the denim as he works his clothes open. It takes effort to look back to the table and the drawer in it, more to move away long enough to stretch for the handle, and Shizuo is just reaching for the bottle inside when Izaya shifts against the bed and Shizuo’s attention is drawn back to the other side of the mattress. Izaya’s pushing his jeans down off his legs, sitting up over the sheets so he can work the fabric off his feet, and Shizuo is leaning back in towards him as if drawn by a magnet, reaching out for Izaya’s hip just as the other pushes his clothes free and over the edge of the bed to the floor. Izaya shudders at the contact as much as if Shizuo’s fingers were touching bare skin and not the thin weight of his briefs, his reaction sudden enough that Shizuo hesitates with his palm barely against the other’s body; but then Izaya reaches out for his shoulder, trailing his fingers up against Shizuo’s collarbone as he leans back over the bed, and Shizuo follows as if drawn by some invisible thread.

Izaya turns his head up, his hair falling back from his face as he pulls Shizuo down, and Shizuo is kissing him again, tasting the part of Izaya’s lips as he fits his knees around the other’s with instinctive ease. His hips rock forward, his weight presses down, and for just a moment Izaya is gasping under him, arching up to fit skin-to-skin against Shizuo’s chest. It’s enough to shatter Shizuo’s focus, enough to startle a groan from his throat, and when he comes back in it’s harder, the tentative care of his first approach dissolving with the sharp curve of Izaya’s back pressing him closer. Izaya’s hot under him, his skin warm wherever Shizuo touches him, and when Shizuo pushes his fingers down under the elastic of the other’s clothes he’s warmer still, the sharp angle of his hip almost blistering against the weight of Shizuo’s palm. Shizuo pushes harder, working the last of the other’s clothes off his hips and down his thighs before he has to pull back, has to draw back over his knees so he can disentangle himself enough to drag Izaya’s briefs off entirely. Izaya’s drawing one knee up in a slow-motion attempt to help, his forehead tensing on strain at the effort, but it hardly makes a difference; Shizuo is moving faster by far to strip him down to skin, and in the end Izaya shifts his movement sideways to spread his knees wider apart and into an invitation instead. When Shizuo looks back up there’s just pale skin in front of him, the faint tremor of tension running along the inside of Izaya’s thighs and the flushed heat of his cock and the shift of his inhales in his chest, and then he looks up and sees the way Izaya is looking at him, his eyes dark with unspoken heat and his lips parted on the rush of breathing. Shizuo takes a breath, feels the pressure of it weight against the inside of his chest; and Izaya reaches out for the bottle Shizuo dropped over the sheets, and Shizuo reaches to take it from him without speaking. Izaya doesn’t look away as Shizuo spills liquid over his fingers, and he doesn’t say anything; he’s just still, his legs trembling very slightly against the sheets as Shizuo closes the bottle and reaches out for him. He’s not sure where to touch -- against the inside of Izaya’s knee, maybe, maybe just to brace himself against the bed -- but then Izaya shifts, and Shizuo reaches out for his hip without thinking, and the contact purrs up the whole length of his arm until he can’t imagine pulling away at all.

He’s careful with his touch. Shizuo can feel the tension of adrenaline all down the length of his arm, can feel his fingers trembling as nearly-imperceptibly as Izaya’s legs are; but then slick fingers touch hot skin, and Izaya shudders, and Shizuo forgets all about the strain across his own shoulders for the tremor running through Izaya’s body. His heart is pounding, his breathing sticking, but he’s pushing anyway, sliding the slick of his touch just inside Izaya’s body. Izaya hisses at the motion, flinching into a moment of tension, and Shizuo cringes but Izaya’s saying “Don’t stop,” with so much command on it that it stops Shizuo’s reflexive retreat unformed. “Keep going.”

Shizuo swallows hard. “I’m hurting you.”

“It’s okay.” Izaya takes a breath, lets it out with deliberate slowness. “I need to relax.” He lifts a hand, closes his fingers around Shizuo’s wrist at his hip; Shizuo can feel the other’s hand shaking but his hold is gentle in spite of that. “Keep going.” A pause, a breath; and Izaya shuts his eyes, and swallows hard. “Please.”

Shizuo can feel strain all along his spine, instinct and rationality growling at each other for control of his body. Instinct says to pull away, to ease the tension creasing Izaya’s forehead and straining at the corners of his mouth, to draw back from the threat of pain Shizuo can see clear across the other’s expression. But _please_ is still hanging in the air, still warm in Izaya’s voice, and that hold is gentle, Izaya’s fingers steadying to ease against Shizuo’s wrist. And Izaya is hot to the touch, sharp edges and soft skin and fragile in a way that Shizuo can feel thrum down his spine with want, with fear, with the desire to have and the terror of hurting, but Izaya’s legs are angled open and his breathing is still panting fast, and in the end Shizuo takes a breath, and takes Izaya at his word, and pushes in farther.

It’s overwhelming, to be so close. Shizuo can feel every shudder of reaction that runs through Izaya before the fingers at his wrist tighten, before the other hisses the sharp inhale of response to give away his discomfort as Shizuo moves too far or too fast. Shizuo can’t find his breath for the tension against his chest, can’t remember how to inhale with Izaya tight around him, and every time the other so much as flinches Shizuo goes still, his heart pounding on panic that insists this is true pain, that says he’s gone too far and truly hurt Izaya again. But Izaya doesn’t tell him to stop, and always after a few heartbeats his fingers ease, his body relaxes, and Shizuo pushes in again to gain more depth, to press them closer together. It feels like it takes forever, feels like it takes a heartbeat, but Shizuo is moving, finding a rhythm to the painfully gentle stroke of his hand, and Izaya is going slack under him, is easing across the sheets until Shizuo draws back to try a second finger, to try to ease the extra width into the tension of the other’s body. Izaya shudders with the first press, tensing through Shizuo’s initial motion; but it’s faster this time, or maybe Shizuo is less panicked, because it feels like an inevitability, now, feels like a slow but certain process forward as he stretches Izaya open around his fingers, as he watches the flutter of reaction over the other’s features ease from the tension of discomfort into something hotter, darker, more shadowed-over behind his eyes. Izaya’s breathing faster, his inhales running up over each other as his fingers tighten and ease against Shizuo’s wrist in an echo of the other’s rhythm; but then so is Shizuo, he imagines he can feel every breath spreading wide and low into his chest like he’s trying to take in all the oxygen in the room and turn it to heat. Izaya’s hot around him, his legs trembling against the bed as if they’re straining against the open angle around Shizuo’s body; and then Izaya takes a breath, and reaches up with his free hand, and Shizuo knows what he’s doing, is sliding his fingers free before Izaya can even curl his fingertips into the weight of suggestion under Shizuo’s boxers.

They don’t talk. It’s strange, how quiet they both are, without the growl of irritation in Shizuo’s throat or the spill of laughter in Izaya’s; but then, it’s not odd anymore, not with the new patterns of interaction they’ve built across narrow coffee tables and in dim-lit hotel rooms in the small hours of the morning. This fits into place with those without effort, as smoothly as Shizuo’s motion to catch at the other side of his boxers fits against Izaya’s push at the other side, and they’re stripping Shizuo down to skin in a single shared motion but he doesn’t feel self-conscious, hardly even notices the air ghosting across his bare skin for the tension of anticipation laid close against the length of his spine. He kicks his legs free of the fabric and resettles himself back into the open angle of Izaya’s legs as he reaches to close his slick hand around himself. Izaya reaches out for his hip, lets his grip at Shizuo’s wrist go so he can push himself up onto an elbow and get closer; and then Shizuo rocks himself closer, and Izaya shifts under him, and hisses a sharp note of pain so clear it chills Shizuo’s whole body as if with ice.

He goes still instantly, looking up to Izaya’s face for some indication of the problem. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s fine,” Izaya says, but he’s speaking past gritted teeth, and he’s letting his hold on Shizuo’s hip go to reach for his knee instead. “My legs are--”

“Shit,” Shizuo says, and rocks back and away. Izaya hisses again, reaching out like he’s trying to pull Shizuo back, but his expression collapses into hurt and he has to reach out to press against his leg instead. “Do you want to turn over?”

“No,” Izaya snaps. “That’ll just make it worse.” He’s pulling at his knee with both hands, grimacing as he draws his leg up closer to his chest. “ _Fuck_.”

“It’s okay,” Shizuo starts.

“It’s _not_ okay,” Izaya fires back, his mouth setting into a frown so sharp Shizuo almost doesn’t notice the tremble of emotion at his lips or the thrum of tension under his voice. “After all this time and now I--” He breaks off, pressing his mouth closed tight around the spill of words, but his eyes are still dark, his expression still trembling with emotion. He looks away from Shizuo’s face, looks down at the tremor running under the bracing hold he has on his knee, and for just a moment Shizuo can see some of that old viciousness in Izaya’s expression, can see the razor edge of hatred turned around in the wrong direction.

“Izaya,” Shizuo says. Izaya doesn’t look up at him but he reaches out anyway to fit his fingers low against the other’s thigh. Izaya shudders at the contact, hissing with something that might be pain and might be heat, and Shizuo slides his hand up farther, pressing gentle against the strain of overworked muscle under his palm as he goes. Izaya’s expression eases, some of the unhappiness unfolding from his mouth, and Shizuo pushes higher to take the place of Izaya’s two-handed support with one of his own. Izaya lets his hands fall and looks back up at Shizuo, and Shizuo meets his gaze with as much steady focus as he can muster. “This is okay?”

Izaya takes a moment before he responds, ducking his head into a nod of assent. “Yeah.”

“Okay.” Shizuo braces himself against the soft give of the mattress, keeping his hand where it is as he reaches for Izaya’s other knee. Izaya makes a face at the first shift, hissing through something almost a sob of pain, but Shizuo moves slow, and after a moment Izaya gasps an exhale of relief as Shizuo’s support takes the strain of the support for him in place of his trembling legs. Shizuo takes a breath, considers their position with Izaya’s knees up over his chest; and then says, “It’s going to be intense for you like this,” with the statement half a question on his tongue.

Izaya’s breath gusts out of him all at once, relief audible enough that Shizuo knows what his answer is going to be even before he says, “That’s fine,” with his voice trembling over adrenaline. “I can handle it.”

Shizuo doesn’t know if he should take Izaya at his word; he can feel the quivering of tight-wound anticipation running through the other’s body, suspects Izaya might say anything at all to get him to continue. But “Okay,” is what he says, and then he’s ducking to fit his shoulders under the angle of Izaya’s knees, and Izaya takes such a drawn-out inhale of heat that Shizuo can feel it like it’s filling his own lungs with flame. He has to brace himself in place, has to steady his balance for a moment; but then he’s steady, and balanced, and they’re both breathing so hard Shizuo can’t pick apart the sound of his own from Izaya’s. Shizuo takes an inhale, and Izaya reaches out for his bracing wrist; and then Shizuo rocks forward, and Izaya sighs an exhale, and they slide together as smoothly as if they were made to fit against the heat of the other’s body. Shizuo’s heart is pounding, his voice absent for lack of air, his spine shivering with electricity like all of Izaya’s body is a live wire; but Izaya’s making a low sound, something too hot to be pain and too low to be protest, and when Shizuo thrusts farther forward Izaya’s eyelashes flutter like he’s trying to shield his gaze from the sun. Shizuo can feel Izaya tensing around him, can feel the flex of Izaya’s fingers at his wrist as he sinks deeper, and his thoughts are reeling, his whole attention is melting away into the radiant friction of Izaya around him.

“Izaya,” he says, and he didn’t mean to speak but his voice is low in his ears and shuddering down through a range he’s never used before. “Are you okay?”

Izaya’s fingers tighten at his wrist. “Yes,” he says, and reaches up to press his fingers into Shizuo’s hair, to make a fist against the soft of the strands. “Don’t stop.”

Shizuo doesn’t stop. His pulse is thunder in his veins, his skin blistering to heat that reminds him of fights, reminds him of the taste of blood and the smell of metal; but there’s no blood, there’s no violence, and what tang there is in the air is just from the heat of Izaya’s skin pressing against his, the odd sharp bite the other carries with him more a reassurance than an irritation, now. Izaya doesn’t let his hold go, on Shizuo’s hair or on Shizuo’s wrist, and he doesn’t open his eyes; Shizuo can see the tension washing over the other’s features with each thrust forward he takes, can see the edge of intensity part Izaya’s lips on the sound of breathless gasps and crease in his forehead, but it’s not quite pain and Shizuo doesn’t stop. It’s easy to lose himself to the rhythm of his movement, to the angle of Izaya’s legs over his shoulders and the heat of Izaya shaking and breathless under him, until it takes Izaya shuddering through a sudden jolt of sensation with one of Shizuo’s forward strokes to remind Shizuo of the flushed heat of the other’s cock still untouched between them.

Izaya’s still holding fists at Shizuo’s wrist and at the fall of his hair, doesn’t seem to be showing the least intention of reaching down for himself; but Shizuo can balance himself on one hand as well as two and can reach down to fit his hand around the heat of the other’s length. Izaya jerks at the contact, his back arching him hard off the bed, but the sound he makes is too low to be anything but pleasure, too much a moan to be mistaken for anything else. Shizuo’s shoulders tense against the heat of that sound, his hand tightens against Izaya’s cock, and when he moves it’s with his focus on his hand instead of his hips, his vision closing in against the waves of sensation writing themselves to clarity against Izaya’s features. Izaya shudders with each of Shizuo’s movements, his expression going tense before melting to heat, and Shizuo can’t catch his breath and he can’t slow the pace of his thrusts and he can’t think beyond this moment, can’t focus on anything when he has Izaya shaking underneath him like he is, and this is familiar, this single-minded focus is as nostalgic as a half-heard echo, as the smell of some long-forgotten memory. Izaya’s fingers tense at his wrist, his thumb digging in hard against Shizuo’s pulse; it’s a flicker of pain, distant as the horizon, because Shizuo can feel him going tense, can feel Izaya’s whole body straining under him like he’s reaching for something just out of reach. His legs flex, his shoulders arch, and for just a moment his expression twists into something indistinguishable from pain, like it’s agony in him and not pleasure. It would be enough to stall Shizuo’s movements, to stutter his rhythm; but he barely has time to catch a breath of panic before the tension evaporates, before all Izaya’s expression melts to startled softness, and then he’s groaning “ _Shizuo_ ” with his voice cracking over the syllables and he’s coming, his whole body quaking into relief against Shizuo’s support. Shizuo can’t catch his breath, can’t clear his vision, and he can feel Izaya coming around him and can see the waves of pleasure sweeping over Izaya’s face and he’s slipping over the edge, heat surging high against his spine until all that’s left for him is to close his hand to a fist on the sheets and gasp “Oh god, Izaya” as the first electric jolt of sensation sweeps out to eclipse his awareness. He’s shuddering through the heat, his vision as white-out unimportant as his hearing; but he can taste Izaya on his tongue, and he can smell metal in the air, and for the first few heartbeats of time that’s all he needs.

Shizuo comes back to himself slowly. His vision returns first, letting him blink distraction against his idle gaze at the sheets before he looks to Izaya. The other is staring at the ceiling, his expression unfocused with heat and his lips half-parted; his cheeks are flushed, his hair tangled, his lashes heavy. Even the soft of his mouth looks distracted, like he can’t remember how to pull himself together enough even to steady his expression into something more structured.

Shizuo takes a breath, reaches for words. “Izaya,” he says, and Izaya blinks and looks back at him, some attempt at attention coming back behind his eyes. “I’m going to move.”

“Oh,” Izaya says. “Yeah.” He lets his hold on Shizuo’s wrist go and reaches up for his hair instead; Shizuo lets his lingering grip go so he can brace both hands against the bed before he ducks his head and rocks himself back and free of Izaya’s body as gently as he can. Izaya still hisses with the motion, an involuntary gust of sound as his fingers tighten in Shizuo’s hair, but he doesn’t say anything, and when Shizuo leans back over his knees so he can ease Izaya’s legs off his shoulders Izaya even lets his hold go completely so he can lie back and let his legs drop to the support of the bed instead of Shizuo. It’s only for a moment; Shizuo has barely let his hold against Izaya’s knee go when Izaya lifts his arm again and tangles his fingers into Shizuo’s hair to draw him back down to the bed. Shizuo lets himself topple forward, lets the languid heat in his body drop him heavy across the sheets, and Izaya turns in towards him as fast as he falls, shifting over the bed until he’s facing Shizuo and can fit both hands against the back of his neck.

Shizuo’s gaze wanders across Izaya’s features, clinging to the crimson of his eyes, the damp at his lips, the pattern of his heartbeat in his throat. “You okay?”

Izaya’s smile is a slow thing, spreading so carefully across his face it takes Shizuo a moment to see it at all. But it’s bright, curling at the corners of his eyes and baring the white edge of his teeth, and when he says “Yes,” Shizuo can hear the purr of almost-laughter under the shape of the word. “It’s okay, Shizu-chan, you didn’t hurt me.”

There’s an irony there, Shizuo knows. He can hear it in the amusement in Izaya’s throat, can feel it like the weight of their shared history forming from the Ikebukuro air around them. But that awareness doesn’t strip away the relief in his chest, doesn’t undo the warmth spreading out into his veins from the drag of Izaya’s fingers against his skin and the rhythm of the other’s breathing against his mouth.

“Good,” Shizuo says, and reaches out to fit his hand against the sharp edge of Izaya’s hip as he leans into a kiss. “I’m glad.”

Izaya’s laugh against his mouth purrs into sincerity over Shizuo’s tongue.


	40. Sunlight

“And this is why my apartment always smells like cigarettes.”

Shizuo looks up from the open window and back towards the hallway leading to the bedroom. “You said I could,” he reminds Izaya, but he crushes out his half-finished cigarette anyway as he turns away from the glass. “Are you ready?”

“Of course I am,” Izaya says without stepping forward out of the shadows of the hallway. “Why, don’t I look ready?”

“You look fine,” Shizuo tells him, even though Izaya delivered the question as more of a taunt than uncertainty. He’s still hovering by the hall, one hand out against the support as if he’s unsteady on his feet as Shizuo hasn’t seen him be in days, his shoulders angled away like he’s considering a retreat to the bedroom. Shizuo comes forward over the distance between them slowly, but Izaya doesn’t move back, even when Shizuo steps in close enough that he could reach out and touch the soft edge of the other’s jacket. “You look good.”

“Thanks, Shizu-chan,” Izaya says without looking up to add eye contact to the bite of his response. “Your fashion sense is always so reassuring.”

“You look like _you_ ,” Shizuo says, and he does reach out, then, brushing his fingers over the lining on Izaya’s familiar coat before dipping in under the weight of it to fit his hand against the dark of the other’s t-shirt and rest his touch at the angle of Izaya’s hip. “Are you ready?”

“I told you already,” Izaya says, but he’s still not looking up, and his voice is starting to strain in the back of his throat. When he lifts his hand from the wall it’s to press his palm against Shizuo’s chest, to curl his fingers around the support of the other’s vest as he leans closer to bump his forehead against Shizuo’s shoulder. “It’s just coffee, it’s not that big of a deal.”

Shizuo doesn’t bother offering the obvious correction. From how audibly Izaya’s voice is wavering, he knows it’s a lie as well as Shizuo does.

“It’s only a couple of blocks,” Shizuo says instead, lifting his other arm to catch Izaya in the curve of his hold. “Celty and Shinra will be waiting for us as soon as we get there. We could still take a taxi, if you want.”

Izaya’s fingers tighten against Shizuo’s vest, the tension a giveaway for the _yes_ that goes unspoken; but then he takes a breath, and sighs heavily against Shizuo’s shirt, and says, “No,” with the weight of frustrated resignation on the word. “I have to go out sometime.” He takes another breath before he lifts his head to look up to meet Shizuo’s gaze and offer the drag of a weak smile. “I’ll never get to make fun of your apartment unless I can come over and see it.”

Shizuo snorts. “That hasn’t stopped you so far,” he says, but Izaya’s smile is gaining traction as Shizuo watches, and when he leans down Izaya shuts his eyes in anticipation even before Shizuo’s mouth fits to his. For a moment Shizuo can feel the tension of the other’s amusement against his lips, can feel the shudder of unvoiced laughter against his tongue; and then Izaya hums something warm, and reaches up for Shizuo’s hair, and his mouth goes soft as he parts his lips in invitation. Shizuo shuts his eyes, and sighs into the warmth, and lets his attention dissolve for a moment into the simple pleasure of kissing Izaya.

It’s only for a moment. Shizuo would be willing to linger longer, if Izaya wanted; but the fingers in his hair tighten, the hand against his chest goes heavy, and when Izaya pulls back he’s holding Shizuo away with enough force to make his intention clear.

“Okay,” he says, and he sounds steadier, now, as if he’s found steel for his resolve or maybe just enough resignation to move forward again. “Let’s go.”

He stays quiet after that, while Shizuo is putting his shoes back on and waiting for Izaya to get into his and while Shizuo pulls him to his feet before they head out into the hallway so Izaya can lock the door behind him. Izaya takes the lead to the elevators, striding forward with enough force that Shizuo is willing to trail in his wake rather than try to walk in step with him. Shizuo holds the elevator door open, and Izaya hits the button for the ground floor, and then it’s just a very few seconds of whirring mechanical motion before the elevator beeps and opens to let them out into the lobby. Izaya steps forward and out of the elevator; and then he pauses, going still in front of the doors to the main street as Shizuo follows in his wake, watching Izaya’s shoulders instead of the street outside. Izaya doesn’t look back at him, doesn’t say anything at all; but when Shizuo steps in next to him he can see the way Izaya’s mouth is set into a line to keep from trembling, can see the intent focus in the other’s eyes as he stares out at the city on the other side of the glass doors. Shizuo watches him for a moment, seeing the tension in Izaya’s shoulders and the tremor of his pulse racing in his throat; and then Izaya swallows, and lifts his chin, and says “Shizu-chan?” with his voice trembling on the name.

“Yeah,” Shizuo says, taking a half-step closer. “I’m here, Izaya.”

Izaya looks at him sideways through the dark of his hair, his eyes shadowed out of their usual color by uncertainty and the indirect light. When he moves it’s to reach out for Shizuo’s hand, to bump his fingers against the other’s until he can interlace their hands and press familiar tension against Shizuo’s skin. Shizuo tightens his hold, bracing the strain in the other’s hand with his grip, and he doesn’t look away from Izaya’s gaze.

Izaya takes a long, deliberate breath, his fingers digging in hard against Shizuo’s hand as he shuts his eyes. Then he lets it out, the breath and the tension together, and turns his head to look back out the door at the street outside.

“Okay,” he says, and his voice doesn’t shake any more than his hold does. “Let’s go, Shizuo.” And they step out into the sunlight of Ikebukuro together.


End file.
